I serve her a Locust, chosen among the small game that seems to me best-suited to the delicate nature of her offspring. While she gnaws the morsel, without troubling in the least about her surroundings, one of the little ones slips down her back, advances over her head and leans down to enquire what is happening. He touches her jaws with the tip of his leg; then briskly he decamps, startled. He makes off; and he is well-advised. The abyss engaged in the work of mastication, so far from reserving him a mouthful, might perhaps snap him up and swallow him without giving him a further thought. A second is hanging on behind the Locust, the fore part of whose body the mother is munching. He nibbles, he pulls, eager for a bit. His perseverance comes to nothing: the fare is too tough. It is plain enough to see: the appetite is awakening; the young would gladly accept food, if the mother took the least care to offer them any, especially food adapted to the frailty of their tender stomachs: but she just eats for herself and that is all. What do you want, O my pretty little Scorpions, who have provided me with such delightful moments? You want to go away, to some distant place, in search of victuals, of the tiniest of tiny beasties. I can see it by your restless roving. You run away from your mother, who, on her side, ceases to know you. You are strong enough: the hour has come to disperse. If I knew exactly what infinitesimal game is to your liking and if I had sufficient time to procure it for you, I should love to continue your upbringing, but not among the potsherds of your native cage, in the company of your elders. I know their intolerant spirit. The ogres would eat you up, my children. Your own mothers would not spare you. You are strangers to them henceforth. Next year, at the wedding-season, they would eat you, the jealous creatures! You had better go; prudence demands it. Where could I lodge you and how could I feed you? The best thing is to say good-bye, not without a certain regret on my part. One of these days, I will take you and scatter you in your own domain, the rock-strewn slope where the sun is so hot. There you will find brothers and sisters who, hardly larger than yourselves, are already leading solitary lives under their little stones, sometimes no bigger than a thumb-nail. There you will learn the hard struggle for life better than you would with me. SOME PLANT LICE CHAPTER I THE PENTATOMÆ AND THEIR EGGS Of the forms which life is able to bestow on her creations, that of the bird’s egg is one of the simplest and loveliest. Nowhere do we find the beauty of the circle and the ellipse, the geometrical bases of organic bodies, combined with greater precision. At one of the poles is the sphere, the perfect form, capable of enclosing the greatest volume in the smallest envelope; at the other is the point of the ellipsoid, which tempers the monotonous austerities of the big end.