The nest, that notable expression of maternal skill and care, is rivalled by other modes of rearing which often reveal the most wonderful tenderness. The Lycosa drags behind her, hanging to her spinnerets, the wallet of eggs that bangs against her legs; and for half the year she carries about on her back her young, fore-gathered in a serried group. In like fashion does the Scorpion nurse her offspring on her back; for a fortnight she allows them to gather strength against the moment of emancipation. Exuding a white wax, the Dorthesia contrives at the tip of the abdomen an exquisite muff into which the young are born, and in which they adorn themselves with cottony tufts and peacefully grow ripe for the exodus. The downy refuge, with its narrow opening, allows the secluded offspring to emerge, one by one, as they become capable of settling down upon the fostering spurge. Lowly among the lowliest, the Kermes of the oak has invented something even better: the mother, transformed into an unassailable fortress, bequeaths to her family, as its cradle, her skin, toughened into an ebony bastion. In May let us patiently examine, in sunny corners, the slender twigs of the holm-oak or evergreen oak. Let us also inspect that cross-grained shrub with small prickly leaves, known to the Provençal peasant as the avaus, and to botanists as the kermes oak. This wretched brushwood, which one can pass over in a single stride, is really an oak, a genuine oak, as is proved by its handsome acorns, set in their rough, prickly cups. We will gather our harvest here as well as on the holm-oak. But we shall pass by the ordinary or English oak; we should find on it nothing in the least like what we are seeking to-day. Only the two species first mentioned will repay exploration. On these we shall see, a few here and a few there, but never in abundance, certain globules of a glossy black, about the bigness of a moderate-sized pea. Here we have the Kermes, one of the strangest of insects. But is this an insect? Is it of the animal kingdom? The uninitiated would never suspect such a thing; he would take the object for a berry, some species of black current. The mistake is all the more natural in that the globule, if bitten into, cracks, and yields a sweetish flavour, offset by a slight bitterness. And this all but delicious fruit, we are told, is of the animal kingdom; it is an insect. Let us look at the creature closely, through the pocket microscope. We look for a head, an abdomen, and legs. There is absolutely not a vestige of a head, nor of an abdomen, nor of legs; all there is to be seen is a sort of large bead, fit for that cheap jewellery which is made of jet. Is there not at least that division into segments, which is the documentary proof of the insect? No! A pebble is not more lifeless.