At the moment when an unexpected ray of sunlight filtered through the clouds like a caress and a benediction from Heaven upon the head of the old scientist, ever faithful to the call of the Power on high, France and Sweden, to mention only the most eager, joined in crowning him with laurels; France offering him a magnificent gold plaque in the name of the Academy of Sciences, and Sweden the Linnæan Medal in the name of the Royal Academy of Stockholm. France—or rather, the Académie Française—has since then offered a further evidence of her admiration by granting him the largest of its money prizes and unanimously recommending him to the jury entrusted with the award of the Nobel Prize. There are seldom fêtes without banquets or banquets without speeches. Among the speeches delivered at Sérignan at the banquet of April 3rd, we must at least mention M. Perrier’s, from which we give an extract on the first page of this book. It may be found in extenso in the Revue scientifique for the 7th of May, 1910. The series of toasts was followed by the reading of numerous telegrams of congratulation, the most loudly applauded of these being that of M. Edmond Rostand, which ran as follows: Prevented from being in your midst, I am nevertheless in spirit with those who are to-day honouring a man worthy of all admiration, one of the purest glories of France, the great scientist whose work I admire, the profound and racy poet, the Virgil of the insects, who has brought us to our knees in the grass, the hermit whose life is the most wonderful example of wisdom, the noble figure that, under its black felt hat, makes Sérignan the complement of Maillane. It must be recorded that Maillane had cordially united with Sérignan, and that poetry and science were at one in celebrating the fame of the man who has justly been called the poet of entomology. Such, in its most salient features, was the festival which consecrated, a little late in the day, one of our purest national glories. This homage had not the ephemeral character of most jubilees, even scientific ones. It found more than one echo, and had an aftermath throughout the country. We will not insist further upon the eager, enthusiastic interest extended by the public to the new edition of the Souvenirs, and the publication of La Vie des Insectes and Les Mœurs des Insectes, which are volumes of selected extracts from the Souvenirs, nor even on the decoration of the Legion of Honour which so justly raised to the rank of officer him who had been a simple chevalier for forty years. But we must refer at somewhat greater length to the three proofs of admiration which must have found their way most surely to his heart. The first, to which we have already alluded, came from the highest literary authority of France, and, we might say, of the world. In his report on the literary prizes awarded by the Académie Française, M. Thureau-Dangui devoted the following passage to our friend: