"Already the gathering mist of evening mingled with the last rays of the sun, and the slugs, tempted by the warm damp air, emerged in crowds from the leaves which strewed the garden-walks. They fared forth, slowly but surely, to feast on the fallen fruit. Clouds of wasps revelled in audacious pillage, tearing to pieces with their keen teeth our finest peaches and most luscious grapes. "Our apple-trees, formerly so productive, were covered with network woven by the caterpillars, and offered us nothing but yellow foliage. In less than a year they had grown aged. [Illustration: THE CHILDHOOD'S HOME OF MADAME MICHELET.] "I had never before been brought in contact with a world like this. My father's vigilance, and still more successfully, the assistance of the little birds, had preserved us from it. So, in my experience, and with a heart overcome by the spectacle of so much ruin, I cursed those whom one ought not to curse, because all creatures are from God. "Later in life, but much later, I understood the designs of Providence. When man is absent the insect ought to take his place, so that everything may pass through the great crucible, to be renewed or purified." * * * * * Such is the fear, such the instinctive repugnance of the child. But we are all children, and even Philosophy, despite its longing after universal sympathy, cannot guard against similar impressions. The apparatus of fantastic weapons with which the insect is usually armed seems to it a menace against man. Living in a world of strife, it is imperative that the insect should be born in mail of proof, and the insects of the Tropics are frequently terrible to the eye. Yet a considerable number of these terrifying weapons, pincers, hooks, saws, pikes, augers, screws, rollers, and dentilated teeth,--the formidable arsenal which gives them the appearance of veterans setting out for the battle-field,--prove, if we examine them rightly, to be the pacific tools with which they gain their livelihood, the implements with which they do their regular work. Here the artisan carries his workshop with him. He is at once the workman and the manufacturer. What should we say of our human operatives, if they marched ever bristling with the steel and old iron they make use of in their labours? They would appear to us very strange and monstrous, and would even fill our minds with fear. The insect, as we shall hereafter see, is a warrior through circumstances, through the necessities of self-defence or appetite, but generally he is before all and above all industrial. There is not a single species which may not be classified according to its work, and ranged under the banner of a guild of trades.