The more numerous are spherical in shape, their size varying according to their age. The smallest are rarely a millimetre [76] in diameter. The ventral surface is flat, and surrounded by a snowy cushion, the rough foundation of the waxy base. The dorsal surface is rounded, and in colour of a rusty red or pale chestnut with delicate white tufts distributed without any orderly arrangement. In this costume the young Kermes reminds us of a certain shell found in tropical seas: the striped or tiger cowry. The sugar refinery is already at work. At the back of the shell a limpid drop is gathering, to which the Ants repair in order to quench their thirst. In a few weeks’ time the colour has changed to an ebony black, the sphere has attained the size of a pea and the Kermes has reached its final state. The minority stretch themselves out in the likeness of a tiny half-contracted slug. The ventral surface is flat and its whole area is closely applied to the twig. The dorsal surface is convex, and its colour a more or less vivid amber yellow. It is sprinkled with protuberant specks of a snowy white, arranged in longitudinal rows to the number of five or seven. With its amber yellow colouration and its ornamentation of white specks, the tiny creature has something of the look of a certain kind of pastry which is sprinkled with spots of white sugar. There is no oozing of a syrupy liquid to the rear of the insect, so that the Ants do not visit it. I have conjectured that this second form is the larval state of the males. From this, I imagine, will emerge winged insects ready for mating. To verify this guess of mine is impossible. My slug-like specimens die on their withering twig, and to follow their development beyond the walls of my study would be an undertaking too great for my patience. Of this very incomplete history of the Kermes of the oak-tree, one point especially should be remembered. The mother, an enormous ovary, exempt from the labours of egg-laying, contracts into a strong-box in which the family is hatched without the removal of the eggs. Within this shrivelled relic the family swarms in its thousands until the moment of exodus. Simplifying to the very extreme the usual method of procreation, the insect turns into a boxful of young. FINIS NOTES [1] Thursday is a whole holiday in the French schools. At this time the author was a schoolmaster at Avignon. Cf. The Life of the Fly, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. xix and xx.—Translator’s Note. [2] Scolopendra cingulata, the centipede.—Translator’s Note. [3] Cf. The Life of the Spider, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: passim.—Translator’s Note. [4] More recent opinion conceives the comb or picten as originally the respiratory organ of an aquatic ancestor of Scorpio, now probably serving as a guide or clasper when pairing.—“B. W.”