Many a time I returned to that delightful spinney, and learnt my first lessons in mushroom-lore in the company of the Crows. My collections, I need hardly say, were not admitted to the house. In this way—by observing Nature and making experiments—nearly all my lessons have been learnt: all except two, in fact. I have received from others two lessons of a scientific character, and two only, in the whole course of my life: one in anatomy and one in chemistry. I owe the first to the learned naturalist Moquin-Tandon, who showed me how to explore the interior of a Snail in a plate filled with water. The lesson was short and fruitful. [1] My first introduction to chemistry was less fortunate. It ended in the bursting of a glass vessel, with the result that most of my fellow-pupils were hurt, one of them nearly lost his sight, the lecturer’s clothes were burnt to pieces, and the wall of the lecture-room was splashed with stains. Later on, when I returned to that room, no longer as a pupil but as a master, the splashes were still there. On that occasion I learnt one thing at least. Ever after, when I made experiments of that kind, I kept my pupils at a distance. It has always been my great desire to have a laboratory in the open fields—not an easy thing to obtain when one lives in a state of constant anxiety about one’s daily bread. For forty years it was my dream to own a little bit of land, fenced in for the sake of privacy: a desolate, barren, sun-scorched bit of land, overgrown with thistles and much beloved by Wasps and Bees. Here, without fear of interruption, I might question the Hunting-wasps and others of my friends in that difficult language which consists of experiments and observations. Here, without the long expeditions and rambles that use up my time and strength, I might watch my insects at every hour of the day. And then, at last, my wish was fulfilled. I obtained a bit of land in the solitude of a little village. It was a harmas, which is the name we give in this part of Provence to an untilled, pebbly expanse where hardly any plant but thyme can grow. It is too poor to be worth the trouble of ploughing, but the sheep pass there in spring, when it has chanced to rain and a little grass grows up. My own particular harmas, however, had a small quantity of red earth mixed with the stones, and had been roughly cultivated. I was told that vines once grew here, and I was sorry, for the original vegetation had been driven out by the three-pronged fork. There was no thyme left, nor lavender, nor a single clump of the dwarf oak. As thyme and lavender might be useful to me as a hunting-ground for Bees and Wasps, I was obliged to plant them again.