In either case we no longer find the fortress of the carlina, encompassed with convergent folioles; what we see is a spacious, roofless ruin, abandoned to the damp and the cold. The white tuft of the ferocious thistle and the blue tuft of the artichoke are delightful villas in summer; in winter they are uninhabitable residences, sweating mildew. Prudence, the safeguard of the humble, counsels the owners to forestall the final dilapidation and to move. The advice is accepted. At the approach of the rains and frosts, both Larini leave the home of their birth and proceed to take up their winter-quarters elsewhere: precisely where I do not know. CHAPTER IV THE BOTANICAL INSTINCT Maternity, when it takes thought for the future, is the most fertile prompter of instinct. To the maternity that prepares board and lodging for the family we owe the wonderful achievements of the Dung-beetles and of the Wasps and Bees. The moment the mother confines herself to laying eggs and becomes a mere germ-factory, the industrial talents disappear as useless. That bravely-plumed fine lady, the Pine Cockchafer, digs the sandy soil with the tip of her abdomen and buries herself in it laboriously right up to her head. Then a bundle of eggs is laid at the bottom of the excavation; and that is all, once the pit has been filled by means of a casual sweeping. Constantly ridden by her male during the four weeks of July, the mother Capricorn explores the trunk of the oak at random; she slips her retractable oviscapt, here, there and everywhere, under the scales of the cracked bark, probing, feeling, choosing the propitious spots. Each time an egg is laid, almost without protection. This done, she has no further anxiety. The grub of Cetonia floricola, breaking its shell, some time in August, in the depths of the leaf-mould, goes to feed on the flowers and there idly slumbers; then, an adult Rose-chafer, she returns to the heap of rotten leaves, enters it and sows her eggs in the hottest places, those where fermentation rages most fiercely. Let us not ask anything further from her: her talents end with this. So it is, in the vast majority of cases, with the other insects, weak or powerful, lowly or splendid. They all know where the eggs must be established, but they are profoundly indifferent to what will follow. It is for the grub to muddle through by its own methods. The Pine Cockchafer’s larva dives farther into the sand, seeking for tender rootlets softened by incipient decay. The Capricorn’s, continuing to drag the shell of its egg behind it, nibbles the uneatable for its first mouthful, making flour of the dead bark and sinking a shaft that leads it to the wood, on which it feeds for the next three years. The Cetonia’s, born in a heap of decomposed vegetable matter, has its food ready to its mouth, without seeking.