The wallets became filled with eggs and then with young Lice, who, matured in the nick of time, and more numerous every day, emerged and spread themselves at will over the spurge. During the heat of the summer you might have thought it had snowed on the plant, so populous was the colony of white Lice. It contained thousands of new inhabitants, varying in size and easily distinguished from the mothers and foundresses by their smaller dimensions, but above all by the complete absence of the marsupium, an addition which must develop very much later, after hibernation at the root of the food-plant. Some are larger and others smaller, according to age, for the matrons still continue to procreate, but all wear the same costume and present the same appearance; yet certain differences, unnoticed at the time of my summary examination, should divide them into two groups, one very small, consisting almost wholly of exceptions, and the other forming the vast majority. In August these differences become very plainly visible. On the tips of the leaves, here and there, are isolated a few Lice who are surrounding themselves with a fragile waxen enclosure, a sort of shapeless capsule, while the rest of the flock, nearly all, in fact, continue to drink, their bills plunged into the bark. Who are these solitaries, withdrawn from the world of drinkers? They are males, undergoing transformation. I open some of these fragile capsules. In the centre, on a downy bed like that which fills the wallets of the mothers, lies a nymph endowed with wing-stumps. At the beginning of September I obtain the first males in their perfect state. Strange creatures, in truth! Standing high on their legs, with long horns, they have the look of certain Bugs. The body is black and powdered with a fine waxy powder, the remains of the capsule in which the transformation took place. The wings are of a leaden grey, rounded at the tips, overlapping one another when at rest and protruding a long way beyond the extremity of the abdomen. To the rear is an aigrette of white filaments, very long and straight, composed, no doubt, of wax, like the cloak of the larval stage. It is a very fragile ornament: the insect loses most of it merely in wandering about among the few leaves in his glass prison, the tube in which I am observing him. In moments of elation the tip of the abdomen rises between the lifted wings and the bundle of spokes spreads out fanwise. The insect is showing off, erecting his tail, like the peacock. To glorify his nuptials, he has attached a comet’s tail to his rump; he displays it fanwise, closes it, opens it again, making it quiver and glisten in the sunlight. When the crisis of joy has passed his finery is folded up and the abdomen sinks down under cover of the wings.