If I tried to continue this record of the guests of my thistles, it would muster almost the whole of the honey-yielding tribe. A learned entomologist of Bordeaux, Professor Pérez, to whom I submit the naming of my prizes, once asked me if I had any special means of hunting, to send him so many rarities and even novelties. The whole secret of my hunting is reduced to my dense nursery of thistles and centauries. [94] What has become of the days when the entomologist lived far from his beloved insects, when he had to seek them in all directions, and even to chase them through fields and vineyards, at the risk of alarming the passers-by or having a crow to pluck with the garde-champêtre? To-day the insects are always there, within reach of his eyes and his hand. He has hardly to look for them nowadays. They come to him, into his garden and even into his house. All Fabre’s preferences are for the insect, but he loves the other creatures also and gladly gives them the rights of citizenship in the harmas. He has a peculiar sympathy for those that are misunderstood and scorned by the vulgar. In front of the house is a large pond, fed by the aqueduct that supplies the village pumps with water. Here, from half a mile and more around, come the Frogs and Toads in the lovers’ season. In May, as soon as it is dark, the pond becomes a deafening orchestra: it is impossible to talk at table, impossible to sleep. We have had a glimpse of the natural wealth of the harmas, but we have no idea as yet of some of the artificial improvements which the inventive industry of the naturalist has introduced. I have [writes Fabre] wished for a few things in my life, none of them capable of interfering with the common weal. I have longed to possess a pond, screened from the indiscretion of the passers-by, close to my house, with clumps of rushes and patches of duckweed. There, in my leisure hours, in the shade of a willow, I should have meditated upon aquatic life, a primitive life, easier than our own, simpler in its affections and its brutalities. I should have studied the eggs of the Planorbis, a glairy nebula wherein foci of life are condensed even as suns are condensed in the nebulæ of the heavens. I should have admired the nascent creature that turns, slowly turns, in the orb of its egg and describes a volute, the draft perhaps of the future shell. No planet circles round its centre of attraction with greater geometrical accuracy. I should have brought back a few ideas from my frequent visits to the pond. Fate decided otherwise: I was not to have my sheet of water. I have tried the artificial pond, between four panes of glass. A poor makeshift!