I am fortunate at this moment in having a highly-cultured visitor, versed in the profundities of philosophic thought. I make way for him before the apparatus wherein the Microgaster is at work. For an hour and more, standing lens in hand, he, in his turn, looks and sees what I have just seen; he watches the layers who go from one egg to the other, make their choice, draw their slender lancet and prick what the stream of passers-by, one after the other, have already pricked. Thoughtful and a little uneasy, he puts down his lens at last. Never had he been vouchsafed so clear a glimpse as here, in my finger-wide tube, of the masterly brigandage that runs through all life down to that of the very smallest. NOTES [1] René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683–1757), inventor of the Réaumur thermometer and author of Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire naturelle des insectes.—Translator’s Note. [2] For the Cicada or Cigale, an insect remotely akin to the Grasshopper and found more particularly in the south of France, cf. Social Life in the Insect World, by J. H. Fabre, translated by Bernard Miall: chaps. i to iv.—Translator’s Note. [3] The harmas was the enclosed piece of waste ground in which the author used to study his insects in their natural state.—Translator’s Note. [4] The eponymous hero of Voltaire’s story of “the little great man,” published in 1752 in imitation of Gulliver’s Travels.—Translator’s Note. [5] .039 inch.—Translator’s Note. [6] About three-quarters of an inch.—Translator’s Note. [7] .117 to .156 inch.—Translator’s Note. [8] In the course of an essay on aberration of instinct in a certain Mason-wasp which is not yet translated into English.—Translator’s Note. [9] A predatory insect, akin to the Locusts and Crickets, which, when at rest, adopts an attitude resembling that of prayer. Cf. Social Life in the Insect World: chaps. v to vii.—Translator’s Note. [10] The order of insects embracing the Bees, Wasps, Ants, Saw-flies, Ichneumon-flies, etc.—Translator’s Note. [11] Cf. The Mason-bees, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, passim.—Translator’s Note. [12] White Ants.—Translator’s Note. [13] Book IV., chap. viii.—Translator’s Note. [14] Jean Buridan (circa 1300–circa 1360), a famous scholastic doctor, who was several times rector of the university of Paris and subsequently founded the university of Vienna. He forms the subject of many legends, including that of the argument known by his name, of which no trace is to be found in any of his works.—Translator’s Note. [15] 3½ inches.—Translator’s Note. [16] 3½ inches.—Translator’s Note. [17] 4 feet 5 inches.—Translator’s Note. [18] A large carnivorous Beetle.—Translator’s Note. [19] The highest mountain in the neighbourhood of Sérignan. Cf. The Hunting Wasps, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. xi.—Translator’s Note.