CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM Lana FREDERICK WARNE AND CO. BEDFORD STREET, COVENT GARDEN. TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. pee FROM THE FRENCH Oe ALPHONSE KARR. Rebised and Gbdited & BY THE REV. Jef*¥OOD, M.A, PLS. &. ® AUTHOR OF THE ILLUSTRATED NATURAL HISTORY. A NEW EDITION. WITH ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS BY WILLIAM HARVEY. LONDON: FREDERICK WARNE AND CO. BEDFORD STREET, COVENT GARDEN. NEW YORK : SCRIBNER, WELFORD AND CO. GUea ihe {: UNIVER ET PREFACE. WHILE so many foreign authors are enjoying an English reputation scarcely inferior to that by which they are distin- guished in their own land, it is rather remarkable that the works of Alphonse Karr should be so little known in this country. There are few writers who have shewn such keen perception of character, such true delicacy of feeling, and such real originality of thought, as are to be found in every page of this charming author. Through all his works there runs a vein of the gentlest feelings towards mankind, an apprecia- tion of everything that is good and noble, and a sympathy with every kindly affection of our nature, rendered more piquant by a slight spice of genial misanthropy. His lively wit is directed lightly against the ordinary failings of mankind; and there is but one class of men for whom he has no mercy. He treats a sham much as an American Indian treats an enemy—he tomahawks him with an argument, scalps him with an epigram, and triumphantly despoils him of his borrowed plumes. Vili PREFACE. In the translation of the Work, it has been an object to preserve, as far as possible, that originality which adds so much to the power of a book; and for this reason the allusions to French customs and manners have been left untouched. Wherever practicable, the plants and other ob- jects of natural history have been designated by their English titles; but, as many of them are not British, their French names have necessarily been retained. In order to make the present volume more worthy of the public notice, it has been copiously illustrated with Wood- cuts by Wiiu1am Harvey, and the BrotHers DawziE.. Merton CoLLEeGcE, Dee. 1854, CONTENTS. ——_ PAGE ; LETTER I. FOROUCRON bee a a a eo a ee we wy we ee we OE LETTER II. The Loves of the Spiders—The Tour—Comparisons. . . .... 6 LETTER III. The Two Carpets—The Glories of Nature always within our Reach—In the Journey of Life are many Promises of Happiness—Our Play- things are but changed in Name . . 2. 2. 2 2 ew we eee LETTER IV. The Start—Costume—The Wren—The Mason Bee—The Chrysis— Marie Antoinette. 2. 2. 6 2 2 eo ew ww ee we we ws : LETTER V. Varied Colours of the Rose—Its Progress from a Wild Flower, or Eglan- tine, to its present Perfection—The Cetonia, the Enemy of the Rose—The Aphis Rose—Extraordinary Fecundity of an Aphis— The Lady-bird—Nature’s Provision to preserve a Balance—The generative Principle in Flowers—Grafted Rose . .....- LETTER VI. Savants—The Reseda or Mignonette—The Marsh-mallow and the BORDA ee eR ee el RR a me LETTER VII. Nut-tree—Nut-Weevil—What is Property? . 1. 2. « 2 s © we LETTER VIII. The Lily—The Ichneumon-fily—The Poppy . 2. « « ee ee ee LETTER IX. Awakening of Creation—The Lupin—Night—The Sleep of Creation— The Glowworm—The Death's-head Moth—Respiration of Plants . 10 17 23 36 41 48 59 x CONTENTS. PAGE LETTER X. ' What is Happiness? — Recollections and Regrets— Universality of Death—Who are mad, and who sanef . . «. « «© © we ee LETTER XI. Upon my Back . . 2. 2 - 2 © we 2 te © we we www LETTER XII. Colours. 2. 2 2 ee ee ee we we ee ee ew ee LETTER XIII. On my Face. . «2 ee es ee we we we we a eee I, LETTER XIV. The Violet-—Ants—The Power of Love—Miracles . . . 2. . s+ + LETTER XV. The Tulips, andtheir Story . . 2 2 6 © © © © ee se eee LETTER XVI. Quasi Maritime. 2. 2 6 2 ee ee eo oe wo ew ew ww LETTER XVII. The Metamorphosed Rivulet 5. . 2 2. 2 2 2 ee ee ee LE?TER XVIII. The Anthropophagi . 1. 2 2 6 5 © © © we wt we we ew LETTER XIX. The Caddis—Aspects of Death—Flowing Water—Dress—The Leaf- cutter Bee . 2 2 0 ee we tt we ww oe ht . LETTER XX. Flowers and their Memories . . . 1 2 se we es we we ee ew LETTER XXI. Music—Dragon-flies—The Water-lily and the Vallisneria . . 1... LETTER XXII. Memories of the Dead. ww ww we ew ee ee th LETTER XXIII. The Golden-crested Wren—Amateurs of Flowers—The Peony .. . LETTER XXIV. The poor Travellers—The Castle of Chillon . . 2... ©» wee LETTER XXV. An Amateur finds fault with an Auricula, . . 2. 2 © ee wwe LETTER XXVI. AnOld Wall... ..- SG Sele PLS el ES a OR LETTER XXVII. The childish Theft—Retribution . . » 2 2 ee se + ee wee 68 72 79 86 93 102 117 123 126 131 141 144 150 153 158 165 168 174 CONTENTS. PAGE LETTER XXVIII. The Pipe and the Snuffbox- ......... th Ser aa LETTER XXIX. Quasi Apiarian . 2. 2... 1 we S00 Qe SSS Be LETTER XXX. Bees Gal cine LES Sab tak Nel See seus Gar Gey Sierra LG Ti deh ey “Wh Of ea BP ek LETTER XXXI. Virgil again—The Hyacinth—The Larkspur . A ee ati SE Pa ae LETTER XXXII. False Gods) 5: ws ee ee a LETTER XXXIII. The Mantis—The Orchis—The Gall Insect—Cochineal—Value of SCATICC. i s3e.. Sige SS Sa eS RR ee ee ee LETTER XXXIV. The little Causes of great Events—The Fraxinella—The Nigella— LETTER XXXV. The enriched Woodman. . . «© - ewe te we ew te ee LETTER XXXVI. Fennel--The encroaching Visitor. . ay abe “fel Cae eek an fae Se LETTER XXXVII. The encroaching Visitor. . ... gas eae ek SG Gar sas ae o LETTER XXXVIIIL. Wonders of Travel—Scientific Nomenclature . . ....... LETTER XXXIX. Wild Flowers in Gardens—The Shower . . . - »« + 2 e+ we ee LETTER XL. After the Shower . . Bi GD OS fas aa Sieh, ges RS Mee OS gece ae Aeon LETTER XLL The Clothes Moth—An incredulous Man does not believe in the Sausage- {IEG ae Gl ee MO ar ea a A hee ae LETTER XLII. Flax—The discomfited Florists . . Bo Bee =) Ss “ LETTER XLIII. A Modern Deity—A Philosophical and Theological History of Hemp and Flax, with their various Fortunes from their Birth to their Apotheosis . . . «+ = i hh ae Bao aig 180 184 190 199 203 207 216 218 225 228 232 235 239 246 258 xii CONTENTS. PAGE LETTER XLIV. The Tendrils of Plants—The Purple of the Ancients—The March of the Orchis . ...... St ats $ Bris LETTER XLV. Nature’s Sympathy less sublime than its Indifference i es A ORS LETTER XLVI. The Connoisseuris deceived . . «© 2 2 ee we et ee te LETTER XLVII. ATaleof Youth . . 1. 1. 1 ee ee ee ee te te LETTER XLVIII. Dl: VAG? s,s ce ey pas vies SRR ae ree ae ce GRR a ee LETTER XLIX. L’Herbe au Chantre—Racine—Boileau—Sorcerera— Pliny— Homer— and Yellow Garlick. . . . . Sd ay iek Sa, ay Tere U8 LETTER L. Virtuessof Plante: 3° as. ah es Ae ek a me a A en a eS es LETTER LI. The Tulip under incognito . 2. 1 wee ee we ee ee LETTER LII. Each Plant has its own Type, but Men try to form themselves on one single Type. . . ... ee 7 8 LETTER LIIl. Man the Monarch of Creation—The Violet and its Proprietors . LETTER LIV. Flowers and their Proprietors . . 2... . 1... ee ee ee LETTER LV. The Groundsel—Laurels—Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality . . . . LETTER LVI. Dreamland. 5 Je. see; vas ces See Ry se Ge tw eee ewe LETTER LVII. Aromatic Plants—Scientific Nomenclature . ....... LETTER LVIII. The Yellow Roses. . . .... : Oo Gee! SE xen ae LETTER LIX. Origin and Properties of certain Plants—Their Colours only compara- tive—End ofthe Tour . . . we lee gn car IS se we 257 260 264 271 281 286 290 294 299 305 308 314 317 322 330 Ah on OF LETTER IL INTRODUCTION. Do you remember, my friend, the day on which you set out for that long and delightful tour, the preparations for which had so long engrossed your time and attention? I called in the morning, to pass a few minutes with you, as I had been accustomed to do, but not being aware that it was the day fixed on for your departure, I was surprised at the unusual, state of your house: everybody appeared un- settled and busy, and the servants were running up and down stairs unceasingly. An elegant travelling carriage, with the horses harnessed, was standing in the court-yard. At the moment I entered, the postilion had already placed one of his huge boots in the stirrup, and one of your servants, B 2 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. mounted as a courier to prepare relays, was teazing his horse, which curvetted beneath him. On my arrival, I found you absent and preoccupied ; it was an effort for you to answer my questions, and address a few words to me; you seemed as agitated as a bird about to take wing. You bade me adieu with a warm and friendly squeeze of the hand, and sprang into the carriage; Arthur, your valet de chambre, got up behind, you waved your hand, and the courier set off at full gallop. In the meanwhile, the postilion drove out of the court-yard, cracked his whip as a signal of departure; this brought the neighbours to their windows, the passers-by stopped, you waved me one more adieu, and bid the postilion, “Go on!” The horses were off at a gallop, and all soon disappeared at the turning of the street. : As for me, I stood looking after you, bewildered, stupified, sad, dissatisfied, humiliated, without knowing precisely why. The neighbours reclosed their windows; the passers-by continued their way; your porter closed the gate of the court-yard, the hinges giving forth their inharmonious gra- ting: and yet there I stood motionless in the street, not knowing what to do, what was to become of me, or where I should go; it appeared to me that the only road in the world was that which you were pursuing, and that you had taken it away with you. ; Nevertheless, I began to perceive that people looked at me with astonishment, and I took at random—for the sake of moving rather than with a view of going anywhere—the oppo- site direction to that by which you had departed, It was not long before it occurred to me to ask myself where [ was going; and this question, to a certain point, embarrassed me; the public walks appeared dull—the people out of spirits—I determined to return home. As I walked along, I began to think of you in not the very best of humours. I could not help fancying that your air was almost disdainful; you seemed flattered by the attention your departure and your equipage excited; you appeared to leave your street, your house, and your old friend, as we leave things that are worn out, and with which we have no longer anything to do. INTRODUCTION. 3 Gradually, I allowed feelings almost amounting to ill-will towards you to creep into my heart; but, happily, I soon stifled them, when I found, upon examination, that they owed their birth to nothing but envy. Every happiness excites jealousy. When we see others in the enjoyment of it, we endeavour to persuade ourselves that they have injured us in some serious manner; and then we try to dignify that mean sentiment. of envy with a nobler name, and call it just resentment, proper pride, or wounded dignity. When once I recognised my weakness, I quickly triumphed over it, and justified you; but it was not so easy a matter te justify myself to my own conscience. , Truly the evil one would have very little hold of us if he presented the baits he lays for us under their proper names. When I returned to my home I could not refrain from enyying your happiness, but you I no longer envied; you again appeared the same excellent friend, as soon as I ceased to seek in you those chimerical qualities that are imposed upon a poor Pylades, although we never examine if we our- selves are for another what we require another. should be for us; in a word, every one is anxious to have a friend, without taking any particular pains to be one himself. But, as my ill-humour towards you faded away, it seized upon myself, and I complained bitterly that my scanty fortune would not permit me, like you, to see other countries, other men, other climates; and I became painfully aware of the poverty to which I had hitherto given but little attention. What! said I to myself, shall I be always, then, like that poor goat which I see fastened to a post in a field yonder? She has already cropped all the grass which grew within the circle its cord allowed it to traverse, and she must recom- mence by nibbling the herbage which she has already eaten down as close as velvet. Whilst thus soliloquizing, I stood upon the balcony of a low window which opened on to my garden, looking out mechanically upon the scene before me; the sun was setting ; at first my eyes, and afterwards my soul, were enthralled 4 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN, and engrossed by the magnificent spectacle which presented itself. High up in the ivavens, towards the west, were three strips of clouds: the highest was formed of a kind of foamy flakes, grey and rose-coloured; the second was in long tints of a darkish blue, slightly tinged with saffron yellow; the third was composed of grey clouds, over which floated a clear yellow vapour: beneath was a vast lake of bright, pure, and limpid blue, while under this was stretched a long grey cloud, with a fringe of pale fire, and lower down was another lake of a rather paler blue; when again floated a narrow cloud, of a grey colour, like that of the burned ashes of a volcano, and under this was a fresh lake of a somewhat greenish blue, like some turquoises, but deep and limpid as the others; and then, beneath all, were masses of cloud, whose upper part was white, glistening with pale fires, and the under part of a sombre grey, with a fringe of the most brilliant flames. There, in a thick orange-coloured vapour, sank the sun, of which only a blood-red point was visible. Then, when the sun had totally disappeared, all that had been yellow in the picture assumed corresponding shades of red; the pale blue or faint green became a more full and dark azure. And all nature seemed, as I did, to admire these eternal beauties. The breeze had ceased to agitate the leaves of the trees; the birds no longer disputed for their roosts under the thick foliage; not even an insect was heard to buzz in the air; the very flowers had closed their rich blossoms, and there was nothing to occupy or distract the senses. Then I reflected that, at many miles distance, you, in your caléche, with your courier and your postilion before, your valet behind, could not possibly behold a more splendid spectacle than that which was spread before my eyes and that, probably such a one would awaken in you less con- templation, and consequently less delight. And T thought of all the riches which God has given to the poor; of the earth, with its mossy and verdant carpets, its trees, its flowers, its perfumes; of the heavens, with aspects so various and so magnificent; and of all those eternal splen- dours which the rich man has no power to augment, and which so far transcend all he is able to buy. INTRODUCTION. 5 I thought of the exquisite delicacy of my senses, which en- ables me to enjoy these noble and pure delights, in all their plenitude. I also remembered how few and simple were my wants and desires ;— the richest, most secure and most indepen- dent of fortunes. And,with joined and clasped hands, with eyes raised towards the gradually darkening heavens, with a heart filled with joy, serenity, and thankfulness, I implored pardon of God for my murmurings and my ingratitude, and offered up my grateful thanks for all the enjoyments he had lavished upon me. And as I sunk to sleep that night, my spirit was filled with pity for those poor rich. LETTER Il. THE LOVES OF THE SPIDERS—THE TOUR—COMPARISONS. As I stood at my window the next morning, I perceived in a corner a spider's web. The hunter, who had spread his nets, was busy in repairing the rents caused, either the evening before or that morning, by some prey of an unexpected size, or a desperate resistance. When all was repaired, the spider, which was twice as big and as heavy as the largest fly, ran along the web without breaking a single mesh, and went to conceal itself in an obscure corner, whence it might watch. Tobserved it for a long time. Two or three flies floating heedlessly about were taken in these perfidious toils, and struggled in vain; the implacable Nimrod darted upon its captives, and sucked them without mercy; after which it repaired one or two damaged threads, and returned to its hiding-place. But behold! another spider of a smaller size. Why has it left its nets and its ambush? Ha! ha! it is a male, and a male in love; he thinks no longer of the chase, he is like the son of Theseus— “My bow, my darts, my car, invite in vain.” He approaches, and he draws back—he loves, he fears. There THE SPIDERS, 7 he is, upon the first thread of the web of her whom he loves; terrified at his own audacity, he recoils and flies away, but only quickly to return. He makes one step, then another, then stops. Gentle reader, you have seen timid lovers, you have been one yourself if you have ever really loved. You have trembled with terror beneath the pure and innccent glance of a young girl; you have felt your voice fail when near her; and certain words which you wished to utter, but durst not, have seemed to fill your throat to strangulation. But never have you seen a lover so timid as this—and not without good reasons. The female spider is much larger than the male, and this is almost generally the case with insects. If, at the moment at which the lover presents himself, her heart speaks to her, she yields, like all other beings, to the sweet influence of love; she softens as the panther does, she gives herself up to the delight of loving and being beloved, and ventures to evince it; she. encourages her timid lover, and her web becomes for that beloved lover the silken ladder of our romances. But if she is insensible, if her hour has not yet come, she nevertheless advances slowly to meet the trembling Hippo- lytus, who seeks in vain to read in Ker features whether he is to hope or to fear; then, when*at a few paces from the amorous youth, she darts upon him*-seizes him—and eats him! True it is then that the most ancient and most ridiculous metaphors invented by lovers cease to be metaphors, and assume a real and terrifying sense. Here is certainly a lover who has reason to complain of the hard-heartedness of his beloved. Here is a lover who will not be accused of exagge- ration, if, into the avowal of his sentiments\he should allow to glide the often-abused question, “Am I tq live or die?” or even this sentence. “If you repulse my love, it will be my death-warrant.” My friend, however, was more fortunate, | for the belle advanced towards him, whilst he waited for |her in visible anxiety; but whether he perceived in her behaviour any unsatisfactory sign, or whether the coquette had not sufficient skill to compose her countenance, which I could not dis- tinguish from the smallness of its proportions, or whether she 8 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. permitted to appear in her air more hunger than love, or whether, in short, the lover was not struck with one of those intense flames which brave all dangers, he took to flight with such rapidity that I lost sight of him, as doubtless did his inhuman mistress, for she returned tranquilly to her ambus- cade, to wait for other victims. I had before been present at similar scenes; for I have passed a great part of my life in the country, and had much studied the habits of insects; but this time, the little drama of which I had been a spectator made a particular impression upon me, and my thoughts reverted to you. Truly, said I to myself, this must be a singular restlessness of spirit, this love of travelling, and travellers are strange beings to go to great distances, and at great expense, to see new things, without having taken the trouble to look at their feet or over their heads, where as many extraordinary and unknown things are passing as they can possibly desire to know. There he is, gone, continued I, still thinking of you; and he may make the tour of the whole world without meeting with so strange a love affair as I have just been a witness of from my window. Under whatever part of the heavens they may dwell, in whatever fashion they may dress, or not dress at all, men live upon four or five passions, which are always the same, which do not vary in their depths, and very little in their forms. Love nowhere presents so singular a drama as that which has just passed before my eyes. In yonder tuft of moss, green as an emerald, wavy as velvet, and as large as the palm of my hand, there are loves, hatreds, combats, transformations, and miracles, going on, which are perfectly unknown to us, and which we have never looked after. And further, in great things, particularly such as concern man, nature appears to have restricted herself to rules almost invariable, whilst among flowers and insects, she seems to have abandoned herself to the most strange and delightful fantasies. A whimsical mania is that which makes men close their eyes against all surrounding objects, and only deign to open them at five hundred miles from home. “Well!” cried I to myself, “T also will make a voyage; I THE TOUR. 9 will see new and extraordinary things; I also will have something to tell.” Make you the tour of the world, I WILL MAKE THE TOUR OF MY GARDEN. I will wait for you here, my friend; you will find me under my fig-tree, or under one of the honeysuckles, and I will make you avow that there is a great and terrible punish- ment for travellers as for inconstant lovers :—for travellers, arrival; for inconstants, success; for they then find how much all countries and all women are alike. What are you going to see abroad? How proud you will be in your first letter, if, by chance, you should’ ever think of writing to me at all, to tell me you have seen women tattooed and painted in divers colours, with rings in their noses. And I will answer you: Well, my good friend, what occa- sion was there for going so far? Why did you go further than two streets from your own house? There was nothing to prevent your looking at your sister-in-law, who, after the example of a hundred other women you are acquainted with, and each of whom is at once painter, original, and portrait, puts pearl white and rouge upon her brow and cheeks, black upon her eyelids, blue to increase the apparent fulness of her veins, and passes rings through her ears in the same manner that savage women pass them throngh their noses. Pray, why is it more strange to pierce one cartilage than another! Can the difference be worth going so far to see? I know very well you will meet with sharpers and cheats ; with the imbecile, the hypocritical, the proud, the egotistical, the envious, the mendicant ; but have you not remarked that there area few of these to be equally found here? Is it so difficult, in this country, to experience hunger or thirst—too much heat, or too much cold, that you think it worth while to go so far for these unpleasant sensations? Is there any plague, or any fever, or any leprosy unknown in our country that you feel a wish to take? Or, are you so weary of the common house-flies which annoy you here in the summer, that you travel two thousand miles for the pleasure of being stung by musquitoes? LETTER III. THE TWO CARPETS—THE GLORIES OF NATURE ALWAYS WITHIN OUR REAChH— IN THE JOURNEY OF LIFE ARE MANY PROMISES OF HAPPINESS—OUR PLAY- THINGS ARE BUT CHANGED IN NAME. TuRoveHout the night, my thoughts have been upon you my absent friend, of you and your travels,——and I com- prehend you less than ever. Are you, well acquainted with these flies that shine and buzz around you; with those flowers which bloom and perfume the air; with those birds that sing so sweetly ; with these leaves that tremble—with that water which murmurs? Have you contemplated them, each once only, and the various parts that compose them? Have you followed them from their birth to their death? Have you seen their loves and their marriages, before going so far to see things you have not seen? As for me, this morning I had a great treat, of which I hasten to give you a share. About three years ago I purchased an old carpet to place in my studio, as I call an apartment tolerably well furnished, THE TWO CARPETS. 1] in’ which I sometimes shut myself up, to prevent interruption whilst I am doing nothing. This carpet represents foliage of a sombre green, strewed over with large red flowers. Yes- terday my eyes fell upon my carpet, and I perceived that the colours were becoming very faint, that the green was getting of a very dingy hue, that the red was faded in a deplorable manner, and that the wool was worn off, and showed the string over the whole space that led from the door to the window, and from the window to my arm-chair in the chimney corner. That is not all; whilst moving an enormous and heavy table of carved wood, I made a rent in the carpet, All this disturbed me so much, that I imme- diately had the rent repaired, but I could neither restore freshness to the leaves nor brilliancy to the red flowers. But this morning, whilst walking round my garden, I stopped before the grass-plot which is nearly in the centre of it. Now here, said I, is just such a carpet as I like, always fresh, always handsome, always rich. It cost me sixty pounds of grass seeds, at twopence halfpenny the pound, that is to say, twelve shillings, and it is about the same age as that in my closet, which cost me twelve pounds ten shillings. That. which cost twelve pounds ten shillings has undergone sad changes; it is now poor, and becoming poorer every day, in its tarnished splendour, threadbare, disgraceful and patched ; whilst this before me becomes every year more beautiful, . more green, more tufted. And with what profuseness of beauty it changes and renews itself! In spring it is of a pale green, strewed over with small white daisies and a few violets. Shortly after, the green becomes deeper, and the daisies are replaced by glossy buttercups. To the buttercups succeed red and white trefoil. In the autumn, my carpet assumes a yellower tint, and instead of the red and white trefoil, it is sprinkled with colchicums, which spring from the earth like little violet-coloured lilies. In winter its white snow dazzles the eyes, as it has been danced and walked over. Then although in the spring, as well as the autumn, it isa little worn and ragged, it puts itself to rights in such a manner, that we cannot perceive its wounds, or even its scars: whilst my other carpet remains there with its eternal red flowers, which 12 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. become more ugly every day, and with its badly-mended rents.—How rich then I am! Will you write to me as you promised? On my part, I will write you an account of my journey; I do not well know whither to direct my letters, but yours will tell me when and where. Rut what do you expect to see yonder which you could not see here? I will endeavour to describe, as if it were done by yourself, some distant country. Let us see: “The sky is grey, like a heavy leaden cupola; the earth is covered with a sheet of snow; the trees bend their black skeleton forms to the sharp winds; at their feet venomous toad-stools spring and flourish, the flowers are dead; the frozen water is motionless between its herbless banks. Those who persist in calling fountains mirrors, in which shepherd- esses contemplate their simple, pretty features, and arrange their modest dress; those who only see in nature what they have first read in books, are obliged to admit that their poetical mirrors are turned silver side uppermost. Some firs, “in their melancholy, sombre foliage, afford asylum to only a few mute birds, with their feathers standing on end with cold, and which, pressed with hunger, fight for the scanty fruit left upon the leafless trees; the purple berries of the whitethorn, the scarlet berries of the service-tree; the orange berries of the cranberry, the black berries of the privet, or the blue ones of the,laurustinus. ; “There is in the air neither the song of birds nor the buzzing of insects, nor the perfume of flowers. The sun only remains every day for a few hours above the horizon; he rises and sets in pale and dull splendour.” What country is this? If it were you, my dear friend, who were writing these lines, you would call this dismal climate Norway, with its snows and ice. For myself, this country is my winter garden; in six months it will be so. I have only to wait. I need not go and seek, midst a thousand dangers—and, what is still worse, midst a thousand cares— the rich countries where the sun is the object of adoration. I will wait a few days, and the sun will make me seek a friendly shade of balmy coolness. There are times when the flowers languish with heat: there are times when one only hears among the parched herbs, the THE GLORIES OF NATURE. 13 monotonous cry of the grasshopper, when one sees nothing. stirring abioad but the lizards.) The nights are cool, sweet, THE LIZARD. and fragrant; the flowering trees are filled with nightingales, exhaling perfumes and celestial melody; and the grass is brilliant with the glow-worms gliding about with their violet flames. You will in this manner, describe to me some far-off country ; J will thus delineate what my garden affords. The seasons, as they pass away, are climates which travel round the globe, and come to seek me. Your long voyages are nothing but fatiguing visits, which you go to pay to the seasons which would themselves have come to you. But there is still another land, a delightful country, which would in vain be sought for on the waves of the sea, or across the lofty mountains. In that country, the flowers not only exhale sweet perfumes, but intoxicating thoughts of love. There every tree, every Plant breathes, in a language more noble than poetry, and more sweet than music, things of which no human tongue can give an idea. The sand of the roads is gold and precious stones; the air is filled with songs, compared to which those of the nightingales and thrushes, which I now listen to, are no better than the croaking of frogs in their reedy marshes. Man in that land is good, great, noble, and generous, 14 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. There all things are the reverse of those which we see every day; all the treasures of the earth, all dignities crowded together, would be but objects of ridicule, if there offered in exchange for a faded flower, or . old glove, left in a honey- suckle arbour. But why do { talk about honeysuckles? Why I am forced to give the names of flowers you know to the flowers of these charming regions? In this country no one believes in the existence of perfidy, inconstancy, old age, death, or forgetfulness, which is the death of the heart. Man there requires neither sleep nor food; an old wooden bench is there a thousand times more soft than eider-down else- where; slumbers are there more calm and delieious, constantly attended by blissfulydreams. The sour sloe of the hedges, the insipid fruit of the bramble, there acquire a flavour so delicious that it would be absurd to compare them to the pine-apple of other régions. Life is there more mildly happy than dreams can aspire to be in other countries. Go, then, and seek these poetic isles! Alas! in reality, it was but a poor little garden, in a mean suburb, when I was eighteen, in love, and when she would steal thither for an instant, at sunset! So loved I a little shut-up garden. After all, is this life anything but a terrible journey, without repose, and with but one common end in view? Is it anything more than arriving successively at various ages, and taking or leaving something at each? Does not all that surrounds us change every year? Is not every age a different country? You were a child; you are a young man; you may become an old man. Do you believe you shall find as much difference between two persons, however remote from each other they may be, as between you a child and you an old man? You are in childhood ;—the man is there with his fair hair, his bold, limpid glance, and his light and joyous heart; he loves every one, and every one seems to love him; everything gives him something, and everything promises him still much more. There is nothing which does not pay him a tribute of joy, nothing which, for him, is not a plaything. The butter- flies in the air, the bluebottles in the corn-fields, the sand of the sea-shore, the herbage of the meadows, the green alleys of THE JOURNEY OF LIFE. 15 the forest—all give him pleasure, all whisper to him promises of mystic happiness. You arrive at youth; the body is active and strong, the heart noble and disinterested.. There, you violently break the playthings of your childhood, and smile at the importance you once attached to them, because you have found some fresh play-things, with which you are as much in earnest as you were with your tops and balls; now is the turn of friend- ship, love, heroism, and devotedness,—you have all these within you, and you look for them in others. But these are flowers that fade, and do not flourish at the same time in every heart. With this one, they are only in bud; with that, they have long since passed away. You ask aloud the accomplishment of your desires, as you would ask holy promises. There is not a flower or a tree that does not appear to have betrayed you. But here we now are, arrived at old age ; we then have grey or white hairs—or a wig. The beautiful flowers of which we were speaking yield fruit but little expected,— incredulity, egotism, mistrust, avarice, irony, gluttony. You laugh at the play- things of your youth, because you still meet with others to which you attach yourself more seriously, places, medals, ribbons of different orders, honours, and dignities. “Tt nothing boots that man, by doom, grows old, He gains each stage, still ignorant and new ;— On our last winters, on our age extinct, Wisdom bestows but pale and sickly light, Like the fair moon’s, whose mild and opal rays Fall on night’s hours, when nothing more is done.” Days and years are darts which Death launches at us, it reserves the most penetrating for old age; the early ones have destroyed successively your faiths, your passions, your virtues, your happiness. Now it pours in grape-shot!—it has shot away your hair, and your teeth, it has wounded and weakened your muscles, it has touched your memory, it aims at the heart, it aims at life. Then everything becomes your enemy: in youth, the beautiful nights of summer brought you perfumes, remembrances, and delicious ‘reveries; they yield you nothing now but coughs, rheumatism, and pleurisies. You hate those who are younger than yourself, because they will inherit your money; they are already the heirs of 16 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. your youth, your hopes, your visions, of all which is aireaay dead in you— ‘Few men the secret learn of growing old; Like certain fruits, they rot, but ripen not.” Tell me, are we to-day that which we were yesterday, or shall be to-morrow? Have we not cause to make singular observations upon ourselves daily? Do we not present a curious spectacle to ourselves? Well, I will decide to commence my journey to-morrow, or perhaps I shall finish by finding that it is.too great an exer- tion, even to make the tour of one’s garden. THE WREN, LETTER IV. THE START—COSTUME—THE WREN—THE MASON BEE—THE CHRYSIS—MARIE ANTOINETTE. IT wave started, my dear friend, and two things already em- barrass me. In the first place, I do not know at what precise distance from the point of departure we must be, to entitle us to employ in our recitals the emphatic pretext which gives so much importance to travellers— We set out, we sailed, we saw, we noticed, we drank, and so forth. Have I any right to make use of this, the true travelling language? And if I do not, will my journey be a reai journey ? My second difficulty is—in the accounts you no doubt pre- pare for me, at the same time that I am inditing a description of my journey, you have an inappreciable advantage over me. If, upon reading some narration, @ Jitéle extraordinary, or a description somewhat supernatural, I indulge in an “ Ah! ah !” or a gesture of incredulity, or even of admiration min- gled with doubt, you will answer me: “Go andsee it!” It is only three thousand miles off. But if, on the contrary, I astonish you by anything unusual or prodigious, I have not the same resource ; I can only say'to you—* Look for your- c t ‘ 18 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. self ; it ig on your right hand or your left ; it is on the rose- bush at the end of the walk, or upon the periwinkle at your feet ;” or, “Step a little on one side; that which I am de- scribing is in the moss you are treading upon: you may destroy my proof.” I have nothing then to do but to tell you the truth; whilst you, satisfied that it is a general belief that travellers at least exaggerate, will not be restrained by a virtue which will bring you no honour, but will simply cause you to be accused of dryness and poverty of imagination. I saw your travelling costume, my dear friend; I owe you 4 description of mine: it is an old dressing gown of black velvet, with which you are well acquainted ; a cap to match, and a pair of yellow morocco slippers—I do, not carry fire- arms. I leave my study at a quarter before six: the sun is already high above the horizon ; his rays sparkle like fire-dust through the leaves of the great service trees, and shining on my house impart to it a rose and saffron-tinted hue. I go down three steps. Here we are in China! Youstop meat my first word with a smile of disdain. My house is entirely covered by a wistaria: the wistaria is a creeping, branching plant, with a foliage somewhat resembling that of the acacia, and from which hang numberless large bunches of flowers of a pale blue colour, which exhale the sweetest odour. This magnificent plant comes from China: perhaps you are admiring it there whilst I contemplate it here. I do not believe I exaggerate, even with you, when I declare that I think this a thousand times more beautiful than the richest palaces—this house of wood, all green, all blossoming, all perfumed, which every year increases in ver- dure, blossoms, and sweet odours. Under the projecting roof is the nest of a wren, quite a little bird, or rather a pinch of brown and grey feathers, like those of a partridge ; it runs along old walls, and makes a nest of moss and grass, in the shape of a bottle. I salute thee, my little bird, thou wilt be my guest for this year! Thou art welcome to my house and to my garden. Tend and bring up thy numerous family. I promise thee peace and tranquillity ; thy repose, but more particularly thy confidence, shall be respected. There is moss yonder, near the fountain, and THE WREN. 19 plenty of dried herbage in the walks, from the newly-mown grass-plat. There she is on the edge of her nest; she looks at me earnestly with her beautiful black eyes. She is rather frightened, but does not fly away. The little wren ig not the only guest at my old house. You perceive between the joists, the intervals are filled up with rough stones and plaster. On the front, which is ex- posed to the south, there is a hole into which you could not thrust a goose-quill; and yet it is a dwelling: there is a nest within it, belonging to a sort of bee, who lives a solitary life.* Look at her, returning home with her provisions; her hind feet are loaded with a yellow dust, which she has taken from the stamens of flowers: she goes into the hole; when she comes out again there will be no pollen on her feet ; with honey, which she has brought, she will make a savoury paste of it at the bottom of her nest. This is, perhaps, her tenth journey to-day, and she shows no inclination to rest. All these cares are for one egg which she has laid; for a single egg which she will never see hatched; besides, that which will issue from that egg, will not be a fly like herself, but a worm, which will not be metamorphosed into a fly for some time afterwards. She has, however, hidden it in that hole, and knows precisely how much nourishment it will require before it arrives at the state which ushers in its transformation into a fly. This nourishment she goes to seek, and she seasons and prepares it. There, she is gone again! But what is this other brilliant little fly which is walking upon the house wall? Her breast is green, and her abdomen is of a purple red; but these two colours are so brilliant, that I am really at a loss to find words splendid enough to express them, but the names of an emerald and a ruby joined together. That pretty fly—that living jewel—is the “chrysis.” I scarcely dare breathe, for fear of making it fly away. I should like to take it in my hands, that I might have sufficient time to examine it more closely.t This likewise is the mother of a family; she also has an egg to lay, from which will issue a * Anthophora retusa.—Epb. + Chrysis ignita.—Ep. 20 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. fly like herself, but which she will never see. She also knows how much nourishment her offspring will require; but, more richly clothed than the bee, she does not, like her, know how to gather the pollen from flowers, or to make a paste of it with honey. She has but one resource, and that resource she is deter- mined to employ—she will neither recoil from roguery nor theft to secure the subsistence of her offspring; she has THE CHRYSIS. recognised the solitary bee, and she is going to lay her egg in her nest: it will hatch sooner than that of the true pro- prietor; then the intruder will eat the provisions so painfully collected for the legitimate child, who, when it is hatched in its turn, will have nothing to do but to die of hunger. There she is at the edge of the hole—she hesitates—she decides—she enters, This insect interests me, she is so beautiful! The other likewise interests me, she is so industrious! But, here she comes back through the air: one would think her a warrior covered with chased armour and a golden cuirass; she buzzes as she comes along. The chrysis has heard the buzzing, which is for her the terrible sound of a war trumpet. She THE CHRYSIS. 21 wishes to fly; she comes out; but the other, justly irritated, pounces upon the daring intruder, beating it with her head. She bruises and tears the brilliant gauze of her wings, and beats her down to the dust, where she falls stupified and inanimate. The bee then enters into her nest, and deposits and prepares her provisions; but, still agitated with her combat and her victory, she sets out again through the air. I follow her with my eyes for a long time, and at last she disappears. The poor chrysis is not, however, dead: she gets up again, shakes herself, flutters, and attempts to fly; but her lacerated wings will no longer support her. What can she do to escape the fury of her enemy? It is not her business to fly away; her business is to deposit her egg in the bee’s nest, and to secure future provision for her offspring, but the bee came back too soon. She ascends, climbing painfully: at times her strength seems to fail her; she is forced to stop, but at last she arrives—she enters—she is in! This time the interest is for her. Just now she was only beautiful, now she is very unfortunate. Iam aware that a long plea might be made for the other. I should not like to be appointed judge between them. Ah! she is out agamm—she flies away! But oh, how happy she is to have succeeded! Now I begin to feel for the bee. The poor bee continues to bring provisions for its young, which, nevertheless will die of hunger: she makes fresh journeys to the flowers she loves; she places herself on the catkins of the willow, upon the white flowers of the arbutus, that beautiful evergreen tree, whose blossoms q f , resemble those of the lily of the valley, and whose fruits are like strawberries; she stops also on the berries of the yew, dent that poor tree, so tormented in our gardens, by being tor- tured into globes, squares, vases, swans, peacocks—a good, kind tree, which lends itself to everything, and is naturally abused. Were I to watch, one after the other, all the flies which shine in the sun upon my house, the insects which conceal themselves in the flowers of the wistaria, to suck honey from them, and the insects which insinuate themselves to eat those honey suckers; the caterpillars which crawl upon the leaves, and the enemies of those caterpillars and those butterflies— 22 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. if I were to describe to you their birth, their loves, their combats, their metamorphoses—perhaps you would have returned from your tour before I had proceeded a single step ; but I am determined, in this journey, to stop only at things which strike my eyes, without research, without labour, without study. Let us quit the old wooden house then, and follow at random this tortuous path. Here is the white julienne, with its long branches of flowers; to enjoy its perfume, you must stoop down to it; it is only in the evening that it exhales its sweets to a distance. This was one of the favourite flowers of the unfortunate queen Marie Antoinette, She was confined in the vilest chamber of the prison of the Conciergerie. In the same apartment, ‘separated from her only by a screen, was a gendarme, who quitted her neither night nor day. The queen’s whole wardrobe consisted of an old black gown and stockings, which she took off to mend herself, remaining with her feet bare. Iam not sure that I should have loved Marie Antoinette, but how is it possible to avoid admiring so much misery and misfortune! A woman,—her name is not sufficiently known —a good and an excellent woman, discovered a blessing and a luxury to bestow upon her whom it was forbidden to name otherwise than as the widow Capet. Madame Richard, a keeper of the prison, brought her every day bouquets of the flowers she loved; pinks, juliennes, and tuberoses. She thus exchanged perfumes for the putrid miasmas of the prison. The poor queen had something to look at besides the humid walls of her dungeon. Madame Richard was denounced, arrested, and put into prison, but they did not dare to perse- cute her further, and shortly they released her. At a later period, Danton exclaimed in his dungeon: “Oh, if I could but see a tree!” The julienne remains the flower of Marie Antoinette. The great Condé, when confined at Vincennes, cultivated pinks. . LETTER V. VARIED COLOUKS OF THE ROSE—ITS PROGRESS FROM A WILD FLOWER, OR EGLANTINE, TO ITS PRESENT PERFECTION—THE CETONIA, THE ENEMY OF THE ROSE—THE APHIS ROSEH—EXTRAORDINARY FECUNDITY OF AN APHIS—THE LADY-BIRD—NATURE’S PROVISION TO PRESERVE A BALANCE—THE GENERATIVE ‘PRINCIPLE IN FLOWERS—GRAFTED ROSE. { was very near passing by this rose-tree: I am passionately fond of roses, but I don’t like to talk about them. The poor roses have been so abused! The Greeks said five or six pretty things about them; the Latins translated these, and added tc them three or four of their own. From that time, the poets of all countries and all ages have translated, copied, and imitated that which the Greeks and Latins said, without at all heightening our love of the flower by any fresh colouring. They have even continued to call the month of May the month of Roses, without reflecting that roses blossom earlier in Greece and Italy than in our lands, where almost all roses wait for the suns of June to expand their beauties. Are you not wearied, as I am, with the eternal loves of the butterfly and the rose; loves, by-the-bye, which have no existence? Butterflies light upon roses as upon other flowers, 24 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. but the rose is far from being one of the flowers they prefer. Are you not wearied, as I am, with the tints of the lily and the rose, with which all women are bedaubed, and which, in reality, would be as hideous as diamonds or coals for eyes, genuine pearls for teeth, or eatable cherries for lips? Are you not wearied, as I am, at having all our beauties roses; in a word, with all the insipidities and sillinesses for which these poor roses are the pretext? I think it disgraceful that our poets are not better acquainted with nature and all the eternal splendours with which God has endowed our abode. I scarcely know one who has not proved by the manner in which he speaks of flowers, trees, and herbage, that he has never taken the pains to look at them. Only listen to them! they confine themselves within three or four trivial gene- ralities, which they have read, and which they repeat like synonymes. They are meadows enamelled with flowers. With what flowers? of what colours are they? And in spring and autumn it is just the same; violets and roses always bloom together in verse, though never in nature. Some, more bold than.the rest, say that these flowers are of a thousand colours. The flowery banks of rivulets! Are they the same flowers that enamel the meadows? They know no more about them. Zephyr who sports in the groves; which same zephyr is very fond of kissing a half-blown rose. They who write in verse are only acquainted with la rose, d demi éclose (the half-blown rose), on account of the rhyme. An innovator, about four hundred years ago, ventured upon Sraiche éclose (newly blown), but they stopped there. But, look yonder; see, springing from its beautiful foliage, sharp pointed as swords, a stem bearing only on one side a spike of lovely rose-coloured or white flowers; that is a gladiolus. The poets speak of it sometimes, but they only know one thing about it, and that is, that it rhymes with tilleul (a linden-tree). They never fail to bring them together, placing the glaieul under the tilleul—a thing I would not do in my garden for the world; my poor gladiolus would fare but badly in such a situation. It is very fortunate they don’t sometimes put the tilleul under the glaiewl (the linden-tree under the gladiolus): it would rhyme quite as well. THE ROSE. 25 But let us return to our rose. We will not call it the Queen of Flowers; we will avoid all the common-places of which it has-been the subject, and over which it has triumphed. Let us look at it only, and say what we see. There is no country without roses; from Sweden to the Coasts of Africa, from Kamtschatka to Bengal, or on the Mountains of Mexico, the rose flourishes in all climates andin all soils; it is one of the grand prodigalities of nature. The rose-tree before which we now stop is covered with white blossoms. Others bear flowers, varying from the palest rose to the deepest crimson and purple, from the most delicate straw colour, to the most brilliant yellow. Blue is the only colour nature has refused it. There are very few blue flowers. 5 Pure blue is a privilege which, with some few exceptions, nature only grants to the flowers of the fields and meadows. She is parsimonious in blue: blue is the colour of the heavens, and she only gives it to the poor, whom she loves above all others. Botanists, who take no account of either colours or per- fumes, pretend that double roses are monsters. What shall we call the botanists? We will exchange a few words with the botanists before we come to the end of this journey. This rose-tree was once a wild rose, or eglantine, which, ia some obscure corner of a wood, decked itself with little simple roses, each composed of five petals. One day, its head and its arms were cut off; and then the skin of one of the stumps which it was allowed to retain was opened, and between the bark and the wood, a little morsel of the bark of another rose-tree was insinuated, upon which was a scarcely perceptible bud. From that day all its strength, all its sap, all its life, have been consecrated to the nourishment of this bud. The wound is closed, but the cicatrice may still be seen. This eglantine bears no flowers of its own: it is a slave, who works for a haughty master. That beautiful tuft of leaves and flowers are not its flowers or its leaves. But observe! there is, upon the green stem, just below the graft, a rose-bud, which begins to peep out. That bud will become a branch; that branch will belong to it. Oh, then nature will resume her rights: the tyrant above, the beautiful 26 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN, rose-tree, the cultivated rose-tree, will wait in vain for the tribute hitherto paid to him; the sap will no longer ascend to him—it will all be kept for this dear scion; there is. not too much for it. But the gardener has perceived this attempt at rebellion: he has cut off the pretender, and all is restored toorder. A few days, however, after this, the rose-tree again appeared to languish; the brilliancy of the monarch was diminished; the foliage looked yellow and faded; and yet the stem of the eglantine was shining andsmooth. Seek for the cause. The poor slave is ingenious and obstinate: he has caused a shoot to glide along under the earth, and only allowed it to see the day at a distance from its parent. Go back two or three steps, and behind that gilly-flower you will see a little rose-bush, growing in shadeand silence. It is like what its father was; like him it has flexible branches and narrow leaves. Wait a year, and it will become an eglantine. Rub its leaves, and you will find they exhale a pine-apple odour, peculiar to one species of eglantine. Such was its father when he had branches and leaves of his own. Here it is in bud; here it is in blossom. But the despot we left yonder is dead, and died of a horrible death: he died of hunger. The revolted slave who supported him, has, for a length of time, conducted under ground, all his sap to his well-beloved offspring. That beautiful crown of double flowers is withered: he himself, the poor slave, is sick, and will soon die; for he has kept nothing for himself. But he dies free: he dies avenged. He leaves a strong, young, and vigorous offspring upon which the little eglantine blossoms of the woods will burst forth next year. Our white rose-tree is not in this situation. The eglantine which bears and nourishes it appears to be resigned to its fate; indeed, we might even say it is proud of its slavery. There are other slaves in the world who have no wish to break their chains when they are well gilded. Our eglantine seems to take pride in its beautiful crown. But what emerald is that concealed in the heart of that rose? The emerald is living: it is a cetonia;* it is a flat, square insect, with hard wings, like those of a cockchaffer, * Cetonia aurata.—Ep. THE APHIS. 27 and brilliant as a precious stone. Turn it up: its under side is of a still more beautiful colour; it is another precious stone, more violet than the ruby, more red than the amethyst. The cetonia, or rose-beetle, lives scarcely anywhere but in roses. A rose is its house and its bed. It feeds on roses. When it has eaten its house, it flies away in search of another, but it prefers white roses to all the rest. If by chance you find it upon another rose, which is rarely the case, neither its abode nor its bed are to its mind. It would inspire you with the same pity that you would feel for a ruined banker, obliged to dwell in the fourth story, and to eat soup and bouilli, as his only banquet. It feels sad and humiliated by it; but still, breathing creatures must live. There are people who resign themselves to a worse fate than this. Twenty flies of different species and colours, are to be found upon different parts of the rose-tree; but I pay no attention to them—they are there by chance. They travel as you do; they trifle as I do. I only take heed of the natives of the country: I shall meet with the others elsewhere. We are not yet ready to quit our rose-tree; for strange things are going on in it at this moment. Where are you, my dear friend? I have no idea where; but I very much doubt if the country in which you are sojourning be as smiling as my rose-tree; and, particularly, whether the inhabitants be as handsome, brilliant, and happy as the inhabitants of my rose-tree. And is it nothing to see living beings happy? But, to a certainty, you are viewing nothing so extraordinary as that which 1 see at this mo- ment. At the extremities of the young shoots of the rose-tree are myriads of very small insects, of a reddish green, which en- tirely cover the branch, and seem motionless: they are aphides or vine-fretters, which are born within a line or two of the place where they now are, and which never venture to travel one inch in the course of their lives. They have a little proboscis, which they plunge into the epidermis of the branch, and by means of which they suck certain juices which nourish them. They will not eat the rose-tree. There are more than five hundred assembled upon one inch of the branch, and neither foliage nor branch seems to suffer much. 28 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. Almost every plant is inhabited by aphides differing from those of others. Those of the elder are of a velvety black ; those of the apricot are of a glossy black; those of the oak are of a bronze colour; those of gooseberry-trees are like mother-of-pearl; upon the absynthe they are spotted white and brown: on the field-sorrel, black and green; upon the birch, black, and another shade of green; upon the privet, of a yellowish green; and upon the pear-tree, coffee-coloured. All enjoy a life sufficiently calm. You scarcely ever see an insect of this kind who is vagabond enough to pass from one branch to another. They sometimes go so far as to make the tour of the branch they dwell upon; but everything leaves us to believe that this is only done in the effervescence of ill-regulated youth, or under the empire of some passion. These outbreaks are extremely rare: i Some of these aphides, however, have | wings; but these wings only come at a ripe age, and they do not abuse THE AP UIE: them. The only serious care that seems to occupy the life of the aphis, is the changing of its clothes, It changes its skin, in fact, four times before it becomes a perfect aphis; something like us men who try on two or three characters before we fix upon one, although in general, we preserve three during our whole lives :—one which we exhibit ; one which we fancy we have; and another which we really have. When the aphides have finished changing their skins, there only remains one duty to fulfil, which is to multiply their species; but they take very little heed about that: they have not, as quadrupeds have, to suckle their young—as birds, to hatch their eggs—or, as other insects, to enclose them in a cavern with necessary aliments. The aphis produces its little ones whilst sucking its branch; and it never turns round to look at the offspring it has given birth to. If the mother shows but little anxiety for the little one, the little one only returns the same amount of filial love that it has received of maternal love. It sets out, descends below the ‘ THE APHIDES. . 29 rest, takes its rank, and plunges its little trunk into the green skin of the rose-tree. There issue thus about a hundred from a single mother, who all fallin regularly below their predecessors, and begin to eat. In ten or eleven days they change their skins four times; on the twelfth day, in their turn, they begin to produce little ones who take their rank, and themselves become prolific towards the twelfth day from their birth. The aphides of the poppy are more pre- cocious; in seven or eight days they have changed their vestments four times, and enjoyed what I should call the happiness-of being parents, if they were not quite indifferent about the matter. But, my good friend, you will say, upon reading this’ passage of my journey, there is an important deficiency here: you profess to describe the lives of these aphides, and you don’t say a word of their loves or their nuptials. I have here, you will add, an immense advantage over you. I relate to you, of every nation, a thousand whimsical or curious ceremonies connected with marriage. Yes, my excellent friend, I may answer, I could remind you of the loves of those two spiders, which, when starting for my journey, I fell in with in the corner of my window; but my present business is only with aphides. Aphides are acquainted with neither love nor hymeneals: aphides eat and make little ones, exactly in the manner of Mother Gigogne, who so delighted our childhood. Nature has taken the fancy to free herself, with regard to aphides, from the general law of reproduction, Don’t, however, imagine that she shrinks from the difficulty on account of the smallness of these animals. There are other animals which can only be distinguished with the assis- tance of a microscope, which, in this respect, come within the general rule. Notwithstanding the admiration which the study of insects must create, you must not let this admiration be exercised upon their greater or smaller size. Great and small are only such with relation to ourselves; and when we express astonishment at seeing a perfection in the organs of the invisible cheese-mite, equal to those of the ox or the elephant, it is a false feeling, arising from a false idea, One of these aphides will produce nearly twenty young ones 30 A TOUR. ROUND MY GARDEN. in the course of a day; that is to say, a volume ten or twelve times equal to its own body. A single aphis which, at the beginning of the warm weather, would bring into the world ninety aphides, which ninety, twelve days after, would each produce ninety more, would be, in the fifth generation, author of five billions, nine hundred and four millions, nine thousand aphides—which is a tolerable amount. Now, one aphis is, in a year, the source of twenty generations. I very much doubt whether there would be room for them upon all the-trees and all the plants in the world. The whole earth would be given up to aphides; but this fecundity, of which there are so many examples in nature, need not alarm us. ‘One poppy plant produces thirty-two thousand seeds, one tobacco plant, three hundred and sixty thousand; each of these seeds producing in its turn thirty-two thousand, or three hundred thousand—would you not think that, at the end of five years the earth would be entirely covered with tobacco and poppies? A carp lays three hundred and fifty THE CARP thousand eggs at once. But life and death are nothing but transformations. Death isthe aliment of life. These aphides are the game that nourishes other insects, which in turn form the food of the birds we eat. Then we are returned to the elements, and serve as manure to the grass and the flowers, which will produce and feed other aphides. We need not go far to seek for the enemies of the aphides. THE LADY-BIRD. 3l Look! here, quite at his ease, on a rose-bud, is a little insect well known to children: it is shaped like a tortoise, and is about the size of a pea. Naturalists <.. call it a “coccinella,” and children Nite know it as the lady-bird. It is now \ innocent enough ; but it has not always \ been so. Before it became possessed of its pretty form, and its polished shell of orange, yellow, black, or red, sprinkled with black or brown specks, it was a large, flat worm, with six feet, and of a dirty grey colour, marked with a few yellow spots. These worms, which issue from amber-coloured eggs, deposited by the female upon leaves, are no sooner born than they set out in search of aphides. When they have found a branch covered with game, they establish themselves in the midst ; of it, and are in want of no food till ¥ the moment they feel they are about THE UADE BED: to be transformed; then they attach themselves to some solitary leaf, and wait, in abstinence, till they become veritable lady-birds. There would still be a superabundance of aphides if the lady-birds were their only enemies. But do you not see, hovering over one of the roses, a fly,* whose two wings move so rapidly that it appears motionless? You would not care to catch it, it so much resembles a bee, or rather a wasp. Tts body is striped with yellow and black, but instead of being round like the two insects you dread, it is remarkably flat ; besides this, it has only two wings, and I do not believe that any two-winged fly has a sting. It does not seem to take any notice of the aphides which cover the branch near to it. It is a parvenu. It has forgotten the humility of its youth, when it had not its rich yellow and black vest- ments, or, more particularly, its wings. It was formerly a sort of shapeless worm, of a colour not at all striking, a dirty green, with a yellow stripe the whole length of its body * Scaeva pyrastri.—Ep. 32 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. Placing itself upon a bed of game, this worm seizes the aphides, one after another, with a sort of hollow trident, through which it sucks them, taking particular care to reject the empty dry skin every time. One of these worms eats nearly an aphis a minute; asregards the aphides, the matter appears to be perfectly indifferent to them, not one of them is ever seen to make the least effort to avoid being eaten. A Roman emperor, who found his end approaching, cried out, in allusion to the custom of decreeing an apotheosis to dead emperors: “I feel that I am becoming a god!” So there isa moment at which this worm feels that it is becoming a fly: and, like the lady-bird, it seeks a solitary place to pre- pare for this metamorphosis. Here is a branch on which the aphides are only on one side; to-morrow there will be none at all; tbe reason of this is, that they are attacked by their most redoubtable enemy, an enemy which the learned and witty Reaumur called the Lion of the Pucerons. This is, like the others, flat in form, and is of a cinnamon colour with citron-yellow stripes; it is much more voracious than the two other species of which we have spoken. If one of these worms, by mistake, happens to seize one of his brethren instead of an aphis so much the worse for his brother—it will eat him. It would be losing precious time to replace it upon a branch, and take an aphis instead of it. One can afford very little leisure for so much ceremony, when one has but a fortnight to eat all these fat aphides in! In fact, at the end of a fortnight, it forgets its appetite, and retires into a corner, shuts itself up in a shell of white silk, as large as a pea, which it spins in a very short time. Three weeks afterwards, the shell opens, and there issues from it the most beautiful little creature you ever saw. It is a sort of large fly* of a gay green colour, covered, when it is settled, by long and large wings, of so fine a texture, that its body can be plainly seen through them. ‘These wings, which are of a very pale green, present to the eye fibres, as it were, of a deeper green, which form a network more charming than that of the richest lace; on each side of the head is an eye of a fiery red colour, the splendour of which far surpasses that of precious stones. * Chrysopa reticulata.—Ep. NATURE’S PROVISION TO PRESERVE A BALANCE, 33 The learned formerly found little bunches upon leaves, which excited their attention; these were stems as fine as hairs, supporting a small bud, white like themselves; at other times the buds were found open, like the chalice of a flower; the thing was declared to be a plant by the learned. The learned, however, were wrong; Reaumur made it clear. that they were the eggs of that pretty fly of which we have just spoken, before and after the birth of the worm which was afterwards to be transformed into a fly. T was afraid but now, of seeing the aphides invade the whole earth ; I at present begin to fear that there will not be aphides enough to feed all the insects to which they are assigned as game. Nature appears to have partaken of this second fear, and for this reason has suppressed the delays and formalities, ordinarily reputed necessary ; aphides must be born, eat, and be eaten in a very few days. But what is that black animal which is ascending the stem of the rose-tree? It is an ant; it climbs spirally, to avoid the thorns; there it is upon the branch that is covered by the aphides. Is this another enemy? Why, La Fontaine told you it fed upon worms and insects; there, it is upon them, but it does not devour them. As aphides eat, they secrete a sweet liquor of which ants are very fond, and this one is come to regale itself—it is a little black milkmaid, who comes to milk some little green cows, which pasture in a meadow of the size of a rose-leaf. There is a bee which has glided into a rose; it is not long before it comes out again, and flies away; its hind feet are loaded with a yellow dust, which it has abstracted from the heart of the flower. That yellow dust, mixed with the honey which it disgorges, will be the paste destined for the worms which are to become young bees. Do not fancy, however, that this dust has no other destination. It is now time to speak of the loves of the roses. We will abstain from allusions to, as we said before, the apocryphal loves of the Rose and the Butterfly. The but- terfly who lights upon a rose, seldom comes there for any other purpose than to deposit eggs, which will become cater- pillars that will eat the rose. The loves, then, of which I will speak are real loves, and are the most charming in the D a =—=—=— 384 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN, world. Figure to yourself that all those roses which bloom in the garden, pale purple or purple violet, yellow or nastur- tium colour, white, or mixed with purple and white, conceal from your eyes numbers of innocent loves. The ancients placed dryads and hamadryads in trees; there are nymphs quite as charming in roses. Let us go back to the rose-tree of the woods. Its flower is composed of five leaves or five petals: in the middle are some delicate threads, supporting little yellow masses, these are the stamens; these threads surround a sort of little green egg, which is called an ovary, which contains the seed or grains; the grains are eggs, which the plants leave for the earth and the sun to hatch, as turtles do, when they deposit their eggs in the sand. The mass which surmounts the stamens is covered with that yellow dust with which the bee that has just disappeared over the wall had loaded its feet. Every grain of that dust is a skin which contains a much finer dust, which fecundates the pistil, When once the pistil fecundates, the nuptial bed is taken down—the leaves of the rose fade and fall, one by one; the stamens become dry, and disappear. The ovary enlarges, and becomes an oblong fruit of the shape of an olive, green at first, then yellow, then orange, then scarlet; then, some day, the fruit bursts, and grains of a gold colour, containing eternal generations of rose-trees, fall upon the earth, and there germinate. The little nymph who inhabits the rose has from fifteen to twenty lovers; but all the inhabi- tants of flowers have not a similar harem: that of the pink has but ten husbands; the fair inhabitant of the tulip is obliged to be content with six; the nymph of the Iris has only three; that of the lilac two; of the red Valerian only one; she who has chosen for a retreat the sumptuous poppy, has around her no less than a hundred eager lovers. And don’t believe, my good friend, that these are lovers invented by versifiers, Cut off the stamens of a rose, and isolate it; you will see the petals lose their splendid colour, become rusty, and fall; but far from enlarging, and being brighter in colour, the pistil also will sink barren. The hangings of the nuptial bed will serve it for a winding-sheet; the rose will die without leaving any posterity. The double rose is a coquette ofan entirely unique species; you have read fairy tales, LOVES OF THE ROSES. 35 in which a magician changes into trees or flowers her rejected lovers; have we not, besides, in mythology, Daphne changed into a laurel, Clytie into a sunflower? Did not Narcissus and Adonis become flowers, to which they left their names? Well, every one of the rose-leaves (beyond five) which sur- round the nymph who dwells in the double rose, is one of these lovers—each of the petals is made of one of the stamens that she had. Certain roses are so double that they have not one stamen left, and then they never have any seeds, Our white rose, which has but five rows of petals, has pre- served a few of its lovers. Then we left the white rose-tree; and, taking three steps, we found ourselves in a hostelry, which has the advantage of being our own home. And you, my friend, where are you going to dine? or, rather, where do you not dine? Where do you sleep? or rather, where do you not sleep? Ancient robbers upon the highways observed that they were often imprisoned, that they were sometimes hung, and they found it necessary to introduce some modification into one of the most ancient professions; they discarded those brown vests, those red pantaloons, those pistol bedecked girdles, which are only met with in melodramas, and they assumed a cotton cap and a white apron ; they took out the licence of an aubergiste, and continue to plunder upon the high roads, the theatre of their ancient exploits, but now under the immediate protection of their ancient enemies, the authorities and gendarmes. In which of these caverns are you this evening—if even you are happy enough to have reached: one? What suspicious food is presented to your appetite? Do you think you are certain the sheets of your bed have never been used by any one else? And with what insects are you about to share your couch? Aitiencs Pa LETTER VI. SAVANTS—THE RESEDA OR MIGNONETTE—THE MARSH-MALLOW AND THE BAOBAB. Savants are men, who, in their greatest success, only contrive to get deeper into the mud than other people.—Language of Science, and the Language of Old Associations. A Brisk shower having driven me in from the garden, I sit me down quietly then in my study, and amuse myself with a species as curious as any of those we shall have opportunities of observing in either your voyage or mine. I propose saying a little about savants. You cannot but remember that smiling portion of your life, full of gaiety, sports, and affections—I mean childhood; that childhood always too soon given up to pedants, who aggravate children for ten years, in order to render them aggravating for the rest of their lives. SAVANTS, 37 Represent to yourself one of our school play-hours: all those open, ingenuous, cheerful countenances; these engaged in running and jumping, those with their kites, others in throwing and catching balls, and others, again, skilfully striking marbles with other marbles from a great distance. Recreation is the true education that belongs to this age; by it we become healthy, vigorous, active, and brave. But the fatal hour has struck. A man, with black clothes and a yellow visage, appears in the court. Everything becomes silent, everything stops, everything is sad. The sports of boyhood must all cease. And why? No doubt, for the sake of learning a trade, an occupation, to assure beforehand the independence of the whole of their lives. Not at all. There are amusements for a riper age as well as for childhood. Youth has no amusements: it despises them, it does not want them—it requires happiness. Childhood in nowise desires other ages to partake of its amusements. Youth would be furious if others wished to take away a portion of its felicity. But mature age insists upon having partakers of its amusements; which arises from the circumstance of these amusements being very tiresome. In fact, these said amusements consist in nothing but reading and re-reading, for the hundredth time, the same Latin and Greek books. For my part, I cannot see why each age should not be left in the free enjoyment of its own pleasures, or why children should be tormented during the whole of their joyous age, by being taught a game which may amuse them at an age they are not certain of attaining. I cannot see why they should be forced to admire what they don’t understand; why an entirely literary education should be given to people who are destined to be dispersed through all the conditions of human life; or why literary studies should be confined, during ten years, to the learning of the only two languages that are never spoken. Jean Jacques Rousseau knew but very little Latin. I have no need to tell you why Homer did not understand Latin at all. That which savants do with regard to children, they do 38 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. with regard to everything they come near. They render everything wearisome, dry, stiff, and pretentious. They cannot leave flowers alone—they put them in starch. See a savant enter a smiling meadow or a perfumed, blooming garden; listen to him: you would take a disgust for both meadow and garden. They began by forming for those graceful things called flowers, three barbarous languages, which they afterwards mixed, in order to compound one still more barbarous; then every savant brought his little contributions of new bar- barisms, as was done among the ancients to those heaps of stones placed by the road-sides, to which every traveller was obliged to add a pebble at least. I was about to write, at hazard, such of the words of this language made by these gentlemen as occur,to me. But you would not only say, is it not sad work to see flowers thus treated, that festival of the sight, as the ancient Greeks called them. But Iam sure you would not read two lines of them; therefore, I will let you off with halfa-dozen— Mesocarps, quinqueloculars, infundibuliform, squammiflora, guttiferas, monocotyledons, &c. dc. &e. * Have you enough? You will never make a botanist; you would have to store your memory with an endless no- menclature like the above, with the satisfaction of knowing that the learned are adding to it daily, and that when acquired you had not gained the name of a single flower. As to the names of flowers, look, at the foot of that wall, at these bunches of mignonette, or reseda. Linnzeus, who fully played his part in the barbarisms, but who considered flowers in a friendly light, and who, of all savants, has least ill-treated them—Linnzus said that the odour of the reseda was ambrosia. Contemplate while you can its green and fawn-coloured spikes, inhale its sweet odour; for here comes a savant—there comes another—the reseda is about to be transformed! In the first place, there is no such thing as odour. Botanists do not admit of odour. For them, odour signifies nothing, nothing more than colour does. Colour and odour are two luxuries; two superfluities of which the learned have deprived flowers. * In the original, more than a page is filled with botanical terms. — Ep. THE RESEDA. 39 Our savants are desirous that all flowers should resemble those which they dry in their herbals—horrible cemeteries, in which flowers are buried with ostentatious epitaphs. One of these savants looks at the plant, and says, “ That is a capparis, of the family of the capparides, without stipule. The petals of the corolla alternate with the sepals of the chalice ; the filaments are hypogenous ; the pistil is stipitated, and formed of the union of three carpels, the ovules attached to the three trophosperms; its seeds are often reniform, and have an endospermis——" “Gently! gently!” cries the other savant; “ the reseda is not a capparis. The reseda is an euphorbia, according to Mr. Lindley, and a cistus, in my opinion. The chalice is a common involucrum; the ovary globular, seldom unilocu- lar; the seeds are enveloped in a fleshy endospermis.” “T admit the endospermis,” replies the other savant, “and Tallow that it is fleshy; but I maintain that the reseda belongs to the capparides. I will further say, that it shows but little of a botanist to make an euphorbiaceous plant of it.” But let us stop! We should tear our sweet mignonette to tatters. Listen to a savant upon another subject. He is speaking of the guimauve, or marsh-mallow, a little creeping plant, with round leaves and rose-coloured blossoms, that you will have great trouble to find in the grass, Listen! «The chalice is monocephalous; the anthers are reniform and unilocular; the pistil is composed of several carpels, often verticillated; the fruits form a plurilocular capsule, which opens in as many valves as there are monosperm, or polysperm cells; the seeds are generally without endospermis, with foliaceous cotyledons.” You understand nothing of this, though, perhaps, if you have an extraordinary verbal memory, you may retain some of the words. Then request the savant to tell you something about the baobab. The Baobab, or Adansonia, is the largest tree in the world ; it may be taken at a distance for a forest; its trunk is often a bundred feet in circumference; it is asserted that some exist in Senegal that are five thousand years old. Hear the savant give a description of a baobab :— 40 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. “The chalice monocephalous; the anthers are reniform and unilocular; the pistil is composed of several carpels, often verticillated; the fruits form a plurilocular capsule, which opens in as many valves as there are monosperm and poly- sperm cells = You stop the savant. “TI beg your pardon, learned sir ; it is of the marsh-mallow you are speaking, or, at least, you said just the same of the marsh-mallow but an instant ago.” “ Marsh-mallow or baobab,” replies the savant, “it is, for us, absolutely the same thing; we do not observe those differences which strike the vulgar, of which the dignity of science will not allow us to take notice.” Savants acknowledge neither size, odour, colour, nor flavour: with them the plum-tree is a cherry-tree, the apricot is a plum: these very men, who, in other cases, give ten names to the same plant, call all these prunus; the almond- tree and the peach-tree have but one name between them— amygdalus. And then you know what charming names the pretty flowers of our fields have received, no one knows whence, except from their own sweet nature: they know nothing of paquerettes (Easter daisy); marguerites (the prettiest name for daisies) ; vergiss-meinnicht (forget-me-not). Marguerites and paquerettes are asters; and the pretty forget-me-not, with all its delightful associations, is loaded with the name of myosotis occipioides. Can you imagine what a rage you would have been in, my dear friend, if some godfather had insisted upon calling your pretty little Mathilde, Petronedia, or Rosalba ? The rain has ceased, the sun has dispersed the clouds, and makes the drops on the leaves glitter like so many diamonds; the drooping branches recover their natural position; a linnet sings in a hawthorn. The savants may settle their disputes by themselves, LETTER VII. NUT-TREE—NUT-WEEVIL—WHAT IS PROPERTY? Tue ardour of the sun drives us to the friendly shade of the trees; and here, on the verge of the thicket, is a nut-tree which arrests our steps for a few minutes. ‘I have told you, my friend, of the little nymphs to whom roses and other flowers are as a grotto or a nuptial bed, wherein their loves are concealed by rich purple curtains. All do not enjoy the same facilities; all do not find their lover and their husband in the same chalice, under the same leaves; it is evident that roses, and a vast number of other flowers which thus unite the two sexes in the same corolla, are like the Guébres, who contracted marriages among bro- thers and sisters; if you were travelling that way, you would be mighty proud to meet with some rude monument which might recal the memory of this now forgotten usage. The nut-tree is not thus constituted; the male and female flowers are not united in one corolla, but they are both born 42 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. upon the same tree. The male flowers appear the first, gene- rally about the beginning of February, a long time before the females venture forth, They are long catkins of a pale yellow, in the form of little close clusters, which hang from the upper extremities of the branches; shivering through the dreary season, they await the coming of the female flowers; some wither, die with cold, and fall off, before these deign to show themselves; but the male flowers are much the more numerous. The female flowers, placed beneath the catkins, begin to appear; these are green, scaly buds, termi- nated by a very small tip of beautiful crimson red; it is this little bunch or tuft which receives and retains the yellow dust that falls from the catkins; and that is the way nuts are made, The hazel reminds us of four pretty verses of Virgil— “ Populus Alcide gratissima, vitis Iaccho, Formose myrtus Veneri, sua laurea Phoebo. Phyllis amat corylos, illas dim Phyllis amabit, Nec myrtus vincet corylos nec laurea Pheebi.” “Hercules loves the poplar, and Bacchus the branches of the vine; the myrtle is consecrated to Venus, and the laurel is cherished by Apollo. But Phyllis loves nut-trees, and, while she loves them, nut-trees shall triumph over both the myrtle of Venus and the laurel of Apollo.” Great virtues were for a long time attributed, nay, still are attributed in the provinces, to a hazel-branch ; it is pretended that a wand of a nut-tree, cut in a certain season, with certain ceremonies, and in the hands of a man purified after certain methods, points of itself to a part of the earth in which is concealed either a mine or a spring. However far off you may be, you will not easily find a more singular belief than that. Upon the nut-tree, as well as upon the trees which sur- round it, I can see countless numbers of insects, without reckoning those which, by their small size, escape my sight ; there are some upon the leaves, some under the leaves, and some in the leaves, that is to say, in the thickness of the leaves. Between the two membranes of the leaves of the nut-tree, little caterpillars live, eat, attain their growth, and spin a small web rather larger than a grain of millet seed. Almost NUT-TREE. 43 all trees, almost all plants, have insects which thus live in the interior of their leaves. A worm which insinuates itself into the leaves of the white lungwort, comes out in his day, meta- morphosed into a little beetle of a whitish colour, in the form of a weevil; the one which escapes from the thickness of the leaves of the mallow, after having lived and been meta- morphosed there, is of a violet colour; another worm feeds upon the parenchyma between the two membranes of the leaves of the henbane, which is a violent poison, and comes out transformed into a fly. But let us return to the caterpillar which dwells in the leaves of the nut-tree. A little moth has laid one egg on each leaf of the nut-tree; from this egg a caterpillar issues, which, urmed with good teeth, makes in the epidermis of the leaf a wound by means of which it introduces itself into its thickness; when once there, it advances, eating right and left; until there remains so little of the leaf, that, by holding it up to the sun, we can plainly perceive the miner. When it has attained its full growth, it shuts itself up in a.web of silk, from which it issues at a later period, a moth: this insect, smaller than an ordinary gnat, when seen through a micro- scope, appears to be the most richly clad, perhaps, of all the moths known; its head is ornamented with two small white tufts, its two upper wings are striped each with seven little bands, alternately of gold and silver. All their species do not travel in their leaf in the same manner; the worm which lives only in the leaves of thistles, eats straight before it ; therefore its road has the appearance of a gallery, very narrow at the beginning, and widening in proportion as it is itself developed. The worms of the leaves of the lilac live in society in the same leaf. Some of the fruits of the nut-tree, in spite of their cuirass of wood, are inhabited as well as the leaves; the flower is not yet faded when an insect* comes and deposits one of its eggs in it; the worm which issues from this egg, easily introduces itself into the fruit, which is scarcely formed and quite soft ; there it feeds upon the kernel, which grows as fast as it grows, and enlarges in proportion as it enlarges; but in the meantime the shell is formed, and hardens so as sometimes * Balaninus Nucum.—Ep. 44 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. to brave the teeth of man. This El Dorado, in which the worm, sheltered from the inclemency of the seasons, had enjoyed at discretion the food which best suited it, has become a prison: it must get out, for it is in the earth that its metamorphosis must take place; nature has given it, at the age it has then attained, teeth which enable it to make a perfectly round hole in the walls of its prison, by which it effects its escape. When you see a nut with a hole thus made, you may be sure that the worm which inhabited it has either left it or is about to leave it; the hole by which it entered is long since cicatrised. When we examine thus the lives of these little creatures, divided into two such distinct ages, we abandon ourselves to singular reveries. At first, it is a worm of an ugly shape, condemned to an humble, obscure, and laborious life, and sur- rounded by enemies. It soon ceases to eat; it spins itself a winding-sheet of silk, and encloses itself in it. There it is, as far as our eyes can convince us, as dead as it can be; but wait a few days, and it issues from the winding-sheet clothed in the richest colours, with brilliant wings which enable it to fly above that earth upon which it had seemed painfully to crawl. It finds in the sweet air a female beautiful and happy as ‘itself, and their loves terminate only with their existence. This life which we lead upon earth, is it really our perfect state? Is that which we call death really the end of life? lave we not also to hope for celestial wings, with which to hover about the sun and beautiful stars—above the miseries, passions, and wants, of a first existence? Bernardin de St. Pierre, who really loved flowers and trees, and who often speaks of them very delightfully, adopted a point of view which, necessarily, often led him to describe things very differently from what they really are: he thought that man was the centre and the object of the entire creation; that everything had been made for him. Sometimes, things presented themselves which he found it very difficult to recon- cile with this system so generally adopted—and I don’t know why. He somewhere says that nature has only placed odori- ferous flowers in the grass upon low stems, or upon shrubs, but that not one bloomed upon a lofty tree. Bernardin de St. Pierre forgot the acacia, which often rises to a height of WHAT IS PROPERTY ? 45 sixty or eighty feet. It was this same system that made him say, “At the sight of men, animals are struck with love or fear.” He left out a third impression, which many animals experience at the sight of man—hunger, and a great desire to eat him. Ask the first passer-by, provided he be of the country, to whom that fine acacia belongs? He will answer you, without hesitation, “That acacia belongs to M. Stephen.” In fact, I have agreements, in due form, that this acacia is mine. Now, is notthis a cruel sarcasm? This tree is more than a hun- dred years old, and has preserved all its vigour and its youth ; whilst I—I am thirty-six years of age, or rather there are already of the mysterious number of years which have been granted me, or inflicted upon me, thirty-six which I have spent, and which I no longer have. I have already begun to die: I have lost two teeth; and lengthened vigils fatigue me. This tree has seen three generations born and die beneath its shade: if I become very aged, if I escape accidents and diseases, if I die from having lived, I shall see it flourish thirty times more; and then, some of the children who are now playing at marbles, and whom we are teaching Latin in spite of themselves, whom we now coax with sugared bread and butter, but who will then be men, will shut me up in a deal box, and place me by the side of others under the earth, in order to make more room for those who are upon it, until another generation which they have brought up for that purpose, shall squeeze them into similar boxes, and place them beside us. And I call this tree mine! Ten more generations will live and die beneath its shade; and yet I call this tree mine. And I can neither reach nor see that nest which a bird has built upon one of its highest branches. I call this tree mine, and I cannot gather one of its blossoms; and yet I call this tree mine! Mine! There is scarcely anything which I call mine which will not last much longer than I shall: there is not a single button of my gaiters that is not destined to survive me many ears. z What a strange thing is this property of which meu are so 46 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. envious! When I had nothing of my own, I had forests and meadows, and the sea, and the sky with all its stars; since I purchased this old house and this garden, I have no longer anything but this house and this garden. Property is a contract by which you renounce everything that is not contained within four certain walls. I remember an old wood near to the house in which I was born: what days have I passed under its thick shade, in its green alleys; what violets I have gathered in it in the month of March, and what lilies of the valley in the month of May ; what strawberries, blackberries, and nuts, I have eaten in it; what butterflies and lizards I have chased and caught there; what nests I have discovered; how I have there admired the stars which in an evening used to appear to blossom in the tops of the lofty trees, and in the morning the sun which glided in golden dust through that thick dome of foliage! What sweet perfumes, and what still sweeter reve- ries, have I there inhaled! what verses have I there made! how I have there read and re-read her letters! How often have I gone thither at the close of day, to recline upon a little knoll covered with trees, to see the glorious sun set, his oblique rays colouring with red and gold the white trunks of the birch-trees which surround me! This wood was not mine: it belonged to an old bedridden marquis, who had, perhaps, never been in it in his life—and yet it belonged to him! Far from being the master of nature, as so many philoso- phers, poets, and moralists pretend, man is her assiduous slave; property is one of the baits by means of which he burdens himself with a crowd of singular taxes. Look yonder at that man cutting his hay, how tired he is: the sweat pours from his brow! He 1s eutting his hay for his horse—he is proud and happy. Man is appointed by nature to harvest her grain, and to sow it again in suitable soils, and to dig the earth round the foot of trees in order that they may receive the sweet and salutary influences of sun and rain. The poor man has, in every moderately inhabited city, a public library, and consequently has at his command from fifteen to twenty thousand volumes; should be become rich, WHAT IS PROPERTY ? 47 he will purchase a library of books for himself; that is to say, he will only have five or six hundred, but what joy and pride will arise from the possession of them! You are poor—the sea is yours with its solemn noises, the grand voices of its winds, the aspect of its imposing rage, and of its still more imposing calms; it is yours, but it like- wise belongs to others: at some future period, when, by dint of labour, mental exertion, perhaps baseness, you shall have become more or less rich, you will have a little marble basin constructed in your garden, or at least you will be eager to buy and keep in your house a vase containing a couple of gold fish. There are moments at which I ask myself whether by chance our minds may not be so turned that we call poverty that which is splendour and riches, and opulence that which is misery and destitution. ‘LETTER VIII. LILY—ICHNEUMON-FLY—THE POPPY, I BELIEVE it is not satisfactorily known what kind of bulbous roots were deified among the Egyptians. Lilies, hyacinths, and tulips, appear to me to have much greater rights to these honours than the garlick and onions of our kitchens. The Latins, however, thought that it was to the latter this ele- vated rank belonged. “0 sanctas gentes, quibus hec nascuntur in hortis Numina.” “ People holy and happy enough to see their gods spring up in their gardens.” The white lily has many enemies; the poets have misused it equally with the rose. I do not know who first thought of degrading it by rendering it a political or party symbol, LILIES—THE CRIOCERIS. 49 It would indeed be difficult to say how many governments and revolutions there have been in France since that tuft of lilies was planted in my garden, how many systems me been lauded to the skies, and dragged through the irt. The lilies in the arms of France were not taken from the lilies of our gardens: they bear no resemblance to them. Some authors who have written volumes on this subject, say that they are the yellow iris of the marshes; others, that the Jleurs de lis were originally bees; while, again, others contend that they were lance heads. Nevertheless, the lilies have not escaped the fate of other political flowers, such as the violet, the imperial, and the red pink; all have been, by turns, proscribed and recalled, multiplied to excess or pitilessly rooted up, in the flower-beds of the Tuileries, and generally placed under the watchful care of the police, considered as suspicious, hostile to power, and mixed up with several conspiracies. The parties and the men who planted and proscribed them are long since dead, and almost forgotten. And yet, every spring, these poor flowers, returned to private life, continue to bloom again in their proper seasons. One insect alone appears to have taken possession of the lily, and established its abode in it. It is a little beetle, whose form is of an elongated square, with black body and claws, and hard elytra, or wings, of a brilliant scarlet. There is no lily that is not an asylum for some of these. They are called Crioceres. When you have hold of one, press it in your hand, and you will hear a creaking noise, which you may at first take for a cry, but which is nothing but the rubbing of its lower rings against the sheaths of its wings. It did not always. wear this brilliant costume—this cos- tume under which it scarcely eats, and that very daintily —this costume under which it appears to have nothing to do but to strut about and make love. It was at first a sort of flat worm, with six feet, of a kind of yellow mixed with brown, which dwelt likewise then upon the leaves of the lily, but which then led a very different life. It was then as greedy and gluttonous as it is now abstemious and delicate. But that was because it had two powerful reasons for eating. The E 50 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. leaves of the lily which it has eaten issue from its body almost without alteration, as if they had been crushed in a mortar. By a particular disposition of its body, this paste of leaves falls upon it, and forms for it a house, or a cuirass, which conceals it entirely. There comes, however, a day which brings other cares. Spring, and its season, will soon return. It is pleasing neither in form nor colour. It ceases to eat, shakes its strange vestment, walks about in an agitated manner, descends and buries itself in the earth. Some months after, it comes out shining, lustrous, as brilliant as you now see it, richly clothed in the most beautiful gloss of China. Full of confidence in themselves, the males and females seek each other, and soon meet. Then the males die. The females have still something to do: they lay their eggs—which at first are of a reddish colour, but afterwards brown—and fasten them to the under- side of the leaves of the lily; then they, in their turn, die. When born, their children will find abundance of the food that is necessary for them. What! already withered leaves! I stoop to pick up these three or four dead ones. The leaves move, and—fly away! But there is no wind to carry them away thus. These leaves are a moth,* to which nature has given the form, the colour, the disposition, the perfect figure, of three or four dried leaves, with their shades and their fibres. Under its first form, it is a pretty large caterpillar, of a dark colour, grey and brown, with brown hairs, and a fleshy brown horn at the extremity of its body. Apropos of caterpillars, Pliny says that the Romans ate a sort of large white worm,t found in the trunks of old oak- trees; and that they formed a very highly esteemed dish. They were fattened for some time on meal before they were served up to the sumptuous tables of the wealthy Romans. ‘This must have been a horrible ragodt-—if, by-the-bye, people who, like you and me, eat oysters, have any right to deem anything disgusting. Here is a caterpillar which seems to have set out on its * Gastropacha quereifolia.—Ep. + Probably the larva of the Goat-moth, (Co. ligni: a pee » (Cossus ligniperda,) or the Stag-beetle, THE ICHNEUMON. 51 travels; in fact, it is not at home here. I recognise it now: it is striped with pale blue and yellow, ‘spotted with black. It comes from the kitchen garden yonder, behind that screen of poplars; for there is nothing here that suits it. It lives upon the leaves of the cabbage tribe, which it shares with other green caterpillars, which are metamorphosed into those white butterflies so common in our gardens and fields. I do not know what sort of a butterfly this becomes. I will catch it, and imprison it, to witness its metamorphosis.* But what is going on now? A little fly,t of a reddish-brown colour, whose body seems to be attached to its corselet by a slender thread only, has pounced upon the caterpillar, which’appears to be not at all inconvenienced by it, but keeps on its way. It is most likely breakfast time, and it is in search of a cabbage. But what is the fly about? What does it want? Ts it a fly of prey? Does it mean, like a little eagle, to carry off the caterpillar as a meal for itself and its young ones? The caterpillar weighs twenty times as much as it does—that is impossible. But the fly is armed with a sting twice as long as its whole body, and as fine asahair. It isan enemy. It is going to kill the caterpillar with that formid- able weapon, and, without doubt, eat it. It raises its sting, .and this slender hair separates into three parts, in its whole length: two are hollow, and are the halves of a sheath for the third, which is a sharp, toothed wimble. It darts it into the body of the caterpillar, which appears to perceive or know nothing of the matter. It soon withdraws its sword, returns it to the scabbard, flies off, and disappears. The caterpillar did not stop; nor does it stop. It is going to find its cloth laid, and an excellent breakfast ready. In a few days, it will descend into the earth to go through its metamorphosis; but if I do not shut it up, in order to ascertain what sort of a butterfly it becomes, my expectations would be disappointed. The fly which stung it, and which naturalists call the ichneu- mon, has only laid an egg in its body. That swerd, the * It is transformed into one of those white butterflies that are so common in this country as well as in France.—Ep. + The ichneumon that generally attacks the cabbage caterpillar, is Microgaster glomeratus, The author, however, describes an entirely different insect, Pimpla manifestata, and it has accordingly been figured.—Ep. 52 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. third part of a hair, is hollow, and has deposited an egg in an interior part of the caterpillar, where this operation does it no harm. From this egg issues a worm, which consumes the caterpillar very slowly. The latter feels ill at ease, loses its appetite, and makes its cocoon; but, in its cocoon, its troublesome guest never ceases to devour it, till, in its turn, it is metamorphosed, and becomes a fly similar to that which we saw lay the egg. It pierces the cocoon of the caterpillar, and flies away in search of a male, and after that of a cater- pillar, in which it may deposit its eggs. The males are without the long, sting-looking wimble. Among the parasites whom you meet with yonder, as you might have done here, my friend, do you think you shall find any so extraordinary in their manner of living upon the world? Each species of ichneumon, of those which lay in cater- pillars, has its favourite caterpillar. There are some so small that they lay in an egg of a butterfly, into which they insinuate their wimble. The worm is born in the egg, and there finds plenty of nourishment—until, changed into a fly, it breaks the shell of it to take flight. There are in our gardens, and among those who pretend to love them, good sorts of folks, who are a little like you, my friend. Their estimation of a flower rises in proportion with its rarity, and the distance from which it has been brought. I have often met with these curiosity-seekers and amateurs, people who find in possession no other pleasure but that des- picable one of knowing that others do not possess—people who have flowers, not for the sake of looking at them, but showing them. Their most cherished flowers—those which were shown me with the most ostentation—those which served as a pretext for the most disdainful tone towards me— were scarce plants, it is true, but of so little brilliancy in themselves, and so completely effaced by other more common plants, that I consider myself, a man—good, excellent, and full of mildness and benignity—not to have yielded, except in one single instance, to the temptation of saying to their ostentatious owner— “Ts that plant very scarce, sir?” “Oh yes, extremely scarce, sir,” iene RARITY NO BEAUTY—FOLDS IN BUDS. 53 “Well, I am very glad to hear that, however.” “ Why so, sir?” “Do you fancy that you alone possess it, sir?” “Yes, sir, I am satisfied of that; nobody has one but myself.” ‘T am enchanted to hear you say so.” “You are polite; but why do you say so, sir?” “ Because, sir, it affords me the assurance that I shall not meet with it often.” Here is a beautiful, rich, and majestic plant: it is the poppy; how finely cut are its sea-green leaves, how straight and flexible is its stalk; the buds of its flowers incline lan- guishingly towards the earth, but a day or two before they burst, they will raise themselves gradually, and present their beautiful, rich cup to the heavens; we may then say of them, with much more truth than of man, that the sign of its nobility is that it naturally looks towards heaven, which is not true as regards man. A man who should take a fancy to keep up the dignity attributed to him by Ovid— “Qs homini sublime dedit, ccelumque tueri Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus ; —that man would get a horrible stiff neck, and would give up the sublime position in a quarter of an hour. There is a bud which has risen; tear open its green en- velope, and see how its splendid petals are enclosed in it, ragged and without order; you might say it was the carpet- bag of a careless student, setting out for the vacation. How can nature treat such fine, such rich stuff with so little care? Is there not a little affected disdain for the purple in this? I only know the flower of the pomegranate, which is also red, whose petals are as ragged-looking in their envelope as the petals of the poppy. But, make yourself easy; scarcely is the flower blown, when a mild, genial air smooths the petals of both the pomegranate and the poppy, and renders them as even as those of other flowers. Different flowers have different manners of arranging them- selves in their buds, in which they are compelled to occupy so small a space. The petals of roses cover each other by a portion of their sides; the bindweed is rolled and folded like 54 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. paper filtres. It is the same with leaves in the bud; those of the syringa are folded long-wise, half upon half; those of the aconite are doubled in their width, from bottom to top, several times over themselves; those of the gooseberry are folded like a fan; those of the apricot are rolled over each other. It is a curious sight to see plants issuing from the earth at the commencement of the Spring; many long-lived plants seem to yield to winter and death, they give up their summer leaves to them, and bury themselves deeply in the earth. But a soft rain and a mild air warns them that the beau- tiful festival of Spring is about to commence, and every plant must prepare itself to go upon the stage and play its part. Some are quite dead; but, before they died, they confided their seeds to the earth—little prolific eggs which the first rays of the sun of March hatch—and which are eager to burst forth; others have various processes for piercing the earth, hardened over them by cold, drought, and wind; such as have firm and sharp leaves, like those of the hyacinth, the gladiolus, and the narcissus, unite them into close points, and make themselves a passage easily; the narcissus and the gladiolus place two of them one over the other, and come out in a flattened blade; the hyacinths enclose their flower, already formed, in three sharp leaves, hollowed in grooves, whose union only forms a single point; others, like the peony, envelope their first buds in a sheath, which falls as soon as they get above ground. But what will the anemones do, whose large leaves are deeply cut, and without consistency? They make the tail of each leaf ascend, bent in two in the middle; it is a rounded elbow, which undertakes to break through the earth,and comes out iike the half of a ring; then, whilst one of the sides is retained by the root, the other, to which the folded leaf holds, is drawn up without being rubbed the least in the world; once out, it develops itself, and expands. But let us return to our poppy. There are red ones of all shades, white, some streaked white and red, and violet coloured; there are no yellow ones, nor blue ones, nor green ones; I don’t even know any that are streaked with white and violet. Notwithstanding the numerous varieties of flowers ahi TRAVELLING WITHOUT MOVING. 55 which are believed to be discovered every day, each has its fixed and infrangible limits; during the last twenty years, forty leagues, perhaps, have been sown with the seeds of dahlias, without one blue one ever being produced, although violet ones are common enough. I will not venture to say what has been done to procure a blue rose. The rose has the advantage of the poppy, there being many beautiful yellow roses. One poppy stem produces more than thirty thousand seeds; they are always contained in the red, the white, and the violet. Many gardeners talk of green roses, produced by grafting the rose upon the holly; and of black roses made by grafting upon the black currant: these are nothing but absurd tales; there are no black flowers, and very few green ones, particularly of a bright green: I know scarcely any of them that are really pretty, except the daphne-laurel, which grows in the woods, and bears charming green odoriferous flowers, the centre of which is occupied by stamens of a fine orange-yellow; it blossoms in the month of February; the berries of it, when ripe, are a deep purplish-black. Now, here is a delightful journey I am taking, my friend, without changing my place. When you are in a boat, it seems that the boat is motionless, and that the two banks fly on each side of you, unrolling, as it were, a panorama of their shores, their poplars, their willows, and the various flowers and the houses which border them; this is a thing that has been remarked a hundred times; but people are so determined to see only that which they have read, that T have never seen it set down anywhere that if the banks of the river appear to pass in a contrary direction to that of the boat, this illusion only extends to a certain distance, and that if there are, nearer to the horizon, other trees and other buildings, the latter seem, on the contrary, to take the direc- tion of the boat, and that these two lines of trees and houses cross with a simultaneous passage in opposite directions. It appears to me that I am the sport of ar illusion similar to that which we experience in a boat, when I see the flowers appear, each in its turn, around me; I almost fancy I am travelling; it would appear, in fact, that I changed my place” as often as I see the decorations, the actors, and the scene 56 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. change, however small or confined it may please me to choose it tobe. There is not an actor that appears before his turn ; they seem every one to issue from the earth, or. their en- velope, at a signal, or as an answer given to the signal,—Sit down and travel. The sharp wind of the winter has swept away the leaves; the despoiled trunks and branches of the trees present various colours: the wood of the cornel-tree is of a brilliant: red; that of the golden ash is yellow; the branches of the Spanish broom are of emerald-green ; the trunk of the birch is white ; the branches which have shot from the linden-tree during the summer are of violet-red; there is a raspberry, which the gardeners call blue-wood, and which is of a splendid violet ; some maples have their branches green; the American walnut is black. But the mosses vegetate and flourish, and at the foot of a tree, the Christmas rose, the black hellebore, opens its flowers, like simple roses, white or pale rose-colour ; the sweet-smelling coltsfoot, the winter heliotrope, displays from the bosom of its large round foliage, its grey and rose- coloured tufts which shed around a sweet vanilla odour. But December is gone; these two actors disappear at the first signal given by the frost; here is January, covering the earth with snow; the frost splits the trees; it is a new scene: the redbreast comes nearer to our dwelling; the calycanthus of Japan opens, upon such of its naked branches as are seen through the snow, little pale flowers, yellow and violet, which exhale a sweet perfume, recalling at once the odour of the jasmine and that of the hyacinth. This is a long monologue; it is the only flower that blows in the open air during severe cold: the flowers soon wither and fall—its grey branches remain naked—the leaves will not show themselves before spring. What is going to appear with the month of February? The nut-trees suspend their long yellow catkins, and expand their little carmine tips; the daphne-laurel, of which I spoke to you but now, is soon followed by another daphne, which is called gentle wood (bois gentil), and which bears flowers like its own, but which are lilac, rose-coloured, or white; the “hepatica opens its little double, rose-coloured, or deep blue roses, this is a sort of first act, an exposition in which tha SUCCESSION OF FLOWERS. 57 personages present themselves almost one by one, or at most, two by two. But in March, the fruit-trees begin to display their rich clothing ; the almond is covered with flowers of a rosy-white, the apricot with white blossoms, the peach with rose-coloured : near the water, the crowfoot opens its golden tufts; primroses blossom on the banks, and yellow gillyflowers 6n the walls; crocuses spring up in the grass, among the white stars of the early daisy, like little lilies, with their yellow corollas, violet, or striped with violet and white; some few violets peep forth from under the dead leaves which fell from the trees in the aA ie then all this disappears as if by the waving of a wand, The bluebell opens its violet blue spikes of blossoms, and all the flowers that have preceded it recognise the signal and disappear; their part is played—they will come on again next year for a fresh representation. Look at them well, admire their various forms, their fresh or brilliant colours, inhale their various perfumes, you will, perhaps, never see them again; if fortunate, you have, at most, twenty or thirty similar .epresentations to behold. But you see them depart without regret—they are re- placed by so many others. In fact, flowers will soon be so numerous it will be impossible to count them; everything blossoms, or seems to blossom—trees, herbs, butterflies ; but each has its day, each has its hour—none come before, none exceed the prescribed moment. Spring and summer pass away—the crowd gets thinner : the queen Marguerites, the true flower of autumn, are replaced by the dahlias, the dahlias by the asters, and the asters themselves fade away at the appearance of the Indian chrysanthemums. There is a variety of chrysanthemums with small yellow flowers, which appears the last of all, and closes the gay procession. ; And with every leaf, with every flower, are born and die the insects which inhabit them, and feed upon them, and likewise those which eat these insects themselves: the flowers sow their seeds, which are their eggs; the insects lay their eggs, which are their seeds; after which the hellebores and the coltsfoot re-bloom, and hatch the insects which belong to 58 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. these plants. A flower which is born and dies, is a world with its inhabitants. But if you are not willing to wait all the year, or if your memory serves you badly, remain there only one day, and see how everything passes before you; see how everything travels to show you new objects. My letter*is long. To-morrow I will only make the journey of the day, as I have just made that of the year. LETTER IX. AWAKENING OF CREATION— THE LUPIN—NIGUT—THE SLEEP OF CREATION—THE GLOWWORM—THE DEATH’S-HEAD MOTH—RESPIRATION OF PLANTS. Tue sun is not yet above the horizon, but thé shadows of night begin to disperse ; *« Night folds her robes about her, and departs.” How many fatiguing and wnwholesome pleasures we pur- chase at their weight in gold, when we have it in our power to enjoy the most solemn and magnificent spectacle—the creation of the world! for nothing. Night had deprived every object of form and colour; day restores them all. In the garden, the yellow and white flowers are the first to receive their colouring. Such as are rose-coloured, red, and blue, are still invisible, and exist not for ihe eye; the foliage 60 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. begins to show its form; -but it is black. The rose-colours begin to appear, then the red, lastly the blue,—all the forms are distinct. Already the hemerocallis, a sort of yellow lily, closed during the night, re-opens its corolla, and begins to spread around a sweet jonquil odour. The dandelion, with its golden flower, had spread forth its numberless rays in the grass, even before the hemerocallis; whilst the Easter-daisies, still shut up, keep their little silver spikes gathered together in close sheaves, of which they only expose the under part, which is of a beautiful rose-colour. The birds awaken, and begin their morning song. The heavens assume a rosy tint; the grey clouds become of a clear lilac; the east expands into a luminous yellow; the cherry-trees planted in the west receive upon their grey bark a rosy tint, from the first ray which the sun launches ob- liquely at them. There is the star of day! the star of life, ascending in all his glory and majesty—a vast globe of fire mounting from the horizon. All the plants now awake,—the acacia, with its leaves folded and placed one over the other. See, they separate, and exhibit their graceful forms. The blue lupin, which has leaves of a dusky green, shaped like hands, had closed its fingers, and let its arms fall against its stalk ;—-now the leaves spread, and rise to their proper position. The lupin has caused many pages to be written by the learned. Virgil has somewhere said, tristis lupinus. Why did Virgil call the lupin sad? The kind of which we are speaking is of a charming appearance; the flower is of an agreeable shape, and a beautiful colour; other kinds afford a sweet perfume. Why did Virgil say that the lupin was sad? A vast number of reasons have been assigned by the learned for it; many volumes have been perpetrated, as well by learned botanists as by learned commentators upon this subject, and yet they have never agreed. I remember a question which puzzled us at college, and remains as undecided as that of the tristis lupinus. “Why,” asked one scholar of another— why is the salmon the most hypocritical of fishes?” His companion reflected for some time, but as he was not a savant by profession, he said, “I don’t know.” A savant never says, “I don’t know;” NIGHT. 61 he prefers error to ignorance. “I don’t know,” said the scholar, looking at the other for the solving word of the enigma. ‘No more do I,” replied the other; “if I had known, I should not have asked you.” ‘The only reason, however, for Virgil’s calling the lupin sad was, that he stood in need, for the measure of his verse, of two long syllables, which the word tristis supplied him with. This is not an uncommon thing with the Latin poets, whom I love to a Féasonable extent, but whom I do not choose to raise to the clouds, in order to give a rational colouring to any degree of envy or malice that I may have towards my contem- poraries. 2 But let us continue to watch the awakening of the plants. The balsam, which had drooped its leaves towards the earth, now again raises them towards the heavens. The primrose, which, on the contrary, had raised its leaves, and embraced its stalk with them, spreads them abroad, and allows them to hang down a little. The insects begin to buzz; the souci-pluvial opens its flower, which is a violet disc surrounded by rays, white at top, and pale violet underneath ; the white water-lily, which yesterday evening closed its flowers, blooms afresh; whilst the convolvulus, which climbs in garlands, loaded with flowers, rose, violet, white, and striped, closes its flowers, which have been open during the night. The day-lilies, in their turn, expand their blue and yellow flowers. Each plant blows at the hour that has been appointed for it: the sun, which forces one to expand, obliges another to close; and yet to the eye, there is no difference in them. Insects, butterflies, and flies of all kinds and colours, are busy everywhere. But the dandelion closes its petals about three o’clock in the afternoon ; the souct-pluvial is not long in following its example, unless the weather be rainy, for then it would have closed much sooner. The daisy, which had spread its little bosom out to the sun, gathers itself together, and becomes pink. Gradually the leaves of the acacia are folded, as are those of the other trees, whose waking we this morning witnessed ; the day-lily closes; the sun is about to set; the white blossom of the water-lily gathers its petals together, 62 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. and shuts up closely. The birds have ceased to sing, and quarrel for the snuggest places under the leaves; you may see the colours you admired in the morning reappear in the heavens; but they have assumed severer and deeper shades, The rose-colour of the morning is red in the evening; the yellow is orange, the lilac has become violet ; the globe of fire descends, and disappears in a red fog, which looks like the lighted ashes of a volcano. The trees in the east, in their turn, receive the adieu and last look of the sun, as the trees in the west received his “good morning,” and his earliest ray. The beetle kind fly heavily about; the horned and rhinoceros beetles issue from the hollows of the oaks, the blue and white stercoraires, more richly clothed than kings, rise from the cow-dung, It is night. But the night has its birds, its flowers, and its insects, which sleep during the day, and which awake while the others sleep. The moon is their sun. The nightshade has opened its little purple, yellow, or white horns. One variety, whose white flower is supported by a long tube, has a centre of a rich violet, and exhales a sweet odour. The evening primrose expands its beautiful perfumed yellow cups. The convolvulus will wait till the middle of the night. The stars glitter forth in the heavens. In the grass the female glowworms* begin to shine with a green, phosphorio light ; it is only the lower extremity of their body, and the under part, WW which is so luminous. WY\ The glowworm is, in the \\ day time, a flat insect, “dragging itself along Wi upon six feeble feet. You know the history ae of Hero and Leander: THE GLOWWokM. they were two lovers, separated by a brauch of the sea. Every night Leander * Lampyris noctiluca.—Ep v HUMMING-BIRD MOTH. 63 Swam across this strait, to go and pass a few minutes with Hero. I don’t know whether Hero was very beautiful, but with the first comer and a few obstacles, a passion is easily kindled. Ovid says she was “beautiful exceedingly,” and [ will take Ovid’s word. One night a tempest arose, whilst Leander, guided by the torch which his lover lighted every evening, was endeavouring in vain to gain the opposite shore. The poet puts a very touching prayer into his mouth: he implores the tempest not to drown him till his return; the tempest was deaf, and the unhappy Hero beheld the body of her lover cast by the waves at her feet. The glowworm on‘y fires her torch, and takes so much pains to show it, because it may serve as a guide to a crowd of little vagabond Leanders, to whom nature has granted wings. The males of the glowworms are much smaller than the females, and, I should think, much more numerous, for there are seldom less than three or four around one female. They are not luminous. * While, following the example of Diogenes, but from another motive, the glowworm bears her lantern, a large moth t passes close to me, its wings making a noise almost as loud as those of a”small bird; in fact, it is much larger than some humming- birds. It passes by the sleeping flowers, it is im search of something; it knows that in those beau- tiful garnet and topaz cups . of the nightshade and ceno- HOE oe a theras, a sweet nectar is prepared for it. There it is over an cenothera; it hovers over without touching the flower, its wings appear motionless, so quickly does it move them. Then it unrolls a trunk coiled beneath its head, which escaped my sight, but which is longer than the whole insect; that trunk separates in two; each of the two is a perfect trunk, by * The author is not quite correct here. The male glowworm does give out some light, but it is very faint.—Ep. + Sphinz ligustri.—Ep, 64 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. means of which it sucks from the depths of the flowers the honey they contain. We must not believe that because it only flies by night, this butterfly, which naturalists call a sphinx, neglects its dress. Its wings are of a grey, shaded with various browns and blacks; its body is painted with white, rose-coloured, and black rings, separated along its whole length by a grey stripe. Here comes another, still more richly clothed; its body and its wings are of two colours—rose, and olive-green. But what plaintive cry do I hear upon that jasmine? Is it that great sphinx * which has lighted there, and takes it DEATH’S-HEAD MOTH. into his head to moan thus? If the cry it utters is lament- able, its aspect is not a bit more exhilarating. Its upper wings are shaded with dark colours, the inferior are of pale tarnished orange, with black bands. Its body is striped with black rings, and with that same dull orange; but it is on its corselet that nature has indulged ina singular fancy; orange and black spots form, in a perfectly distinct manner, the figure of a death’s head. * Acherontia atropos.—Ep. DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH. 65 In 1730 there appeared in Brittany a great number of these moths; their cry and their singular appearance spread terror in every mind. Curés spoke of them in the pulpit, and pronounced their appearance an evident sign of the anger of heaven. Imaginations were affected in the highest degree ; many persons made public confession; one curé wrote a homily upon this subject, which was inserted in “ Le Mercure de France.” ‘The most incredulous’said that this prodigy announced a pestilence. M. de Pontchartrain, then Secretary of the Marine, demanded of the Academy if any of these alarms were well founded. The Academy, having answered negatively, was strongly blamed by the Church; the fathers of Trevoux proclaimed in their journal, that it was very wrong to disabuse the people concerning a salutary terror. “ The public,” said they, “has always reason to be alarmed, because it is always guilty, and everything which can re- mind it of the anger of an avenging God, is always to be respected.” The kind of cry which emanates from this sphinx, so justly named Atropos, is produced by the rubbing of its trunk against the partitions which inclose it. It has been a large yellow and green caterpillar. The convolvulus does not expand its flowers till the night is pretty far advanced. There is a little ugly enough cater- pillar, which lives upon the convolvulus, and which becomes a very pretty and singular moth;* the caterpillar is of a whitish green, rather velvety. The moth is of a dazzling whiteness: its wings appear as if made of ten little feathers _ of extreme fineness. Each of the upper wings is divided into two; each of the inferior wings is divided into three cut parts in such a manner, that it is only with the aid of a microscope we can discover they are not real feathers, much more white than those of the swan, much more delicately fringed than those of the ostrich. ; Night is the time in which trees breathe the oxygen which. is as necessary for their existence as it is for ours. In the day time they will expire and return to the air much more * Plerophorus pentadactylus.—EpD. F 66 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. of it than they have taken; the action of the sun decom- posing the carbonic acid gas. These two phenomena explain the danger there is in keeping vegetables during’the night in a close chamber, for then the vegetables absorb a part of the oxygen, and diminish the quantity of respirable air. This quantity, necessary for every man, is more considerable than is generally imagined. A man consumes per hour at least six cubic meres of air. Most of our pleasures taken in common,—as balls, svirées, theatres, assemblies,—begin by considerably diminishing this indispensable ration. It is difficult ina rout or soirée, as they are now-a-days given, for each person to have for his part more than a metre and a half of respirable air. You would not easily determine to enjoy any of these pleasures if you were obliged ‘to buy them at the price of the privation of two-thirds of your food. The privation of air produces effects less immediate; but it is probable that it engen- ders great part of the diseases peculiar to the inhabitants of cities. Besides that, vegetables shut up in a chamber absorb a part of the oxygen, they expire an equal portion of carbonic acid gas, which is a mortal poison when mixed in too strong a proportion with the air we breathe, and of which it is nevertheless one of the elements. This equally explains the pleasure we experience in the day time under trees, a happi- ness which is not to be attributed merely to the freshness and shade. You see, my friend, that without its being necessary to change our place, it is sufficient to look around us to see new and surprising things pass, without ceasing, before our eyes. Not one of the plants, not one of the insects, of which I have spoken to you in this and the preceding letters, blossoms, shows itself, shuts up, is transformed, or dies, either before or after the epoch, the day, the hour as- signed it, The dandelion always open its rays of gold before the daisy displays its rays of silver; the conothera never develops its corolla before the water-lily has folded up its petals. The blackbird whistles in the morning; the nightingale sings THE FROG. 67 through the night; the grasshopper, in the grass, chirps hoarsely during the burning heat of the sun, a kind -of croaking like that of frogs in a marsh, when the sun is sinking. Every moment has its interest, its spectacle, its riches, its splendour! THE FROG, f Fir Wy re LETTER X. WHAT I8 HAPPINESS!—RECOLLECTIONS AND REGRETS—UNIVERSALITY OF DEATH —WHO ARE MAD, AND WHO SANE. Wuen I endeavour to remember all the happinesses of my life, I find there is scarcely one I had anticipated that I secured in the end. Happinesses are like game: when we aim at them too far off, we miss them. Most of those which recur to my memory have come unexpectedly. For many people, happiness is a gross, imaginary and compact thing, which they wish to find all in a piece; it is a diamond as large as a house, which they pass their lives in seeking and pursuing at all hazards, They are like a horticulturist of my acquaintance, whe dreams of nothing but meeting with a blue rose, a rose which I have sought after a little myself, and which it is more unreasonable to hope for than the diamond of which I spoke ‘WHAT IS HAPPINESS ? 69 to you just now. Since this fancy seized the poor man’s brains, other flowers have had ‘neither splendour nor perfume for him. Happiness is not a blue rose,—it is the grass of the men- dows, the bindweed of the fields, the wild rose of the hedges, a word, a song, a no matter what. It is not a diamond as large as the house: it is a mosaic of little stones, each one of which often has no separate value of itself. This large diamond, this blue rose, this great happiness, this monolith, is a dream. Every happiness I can recal, I neither pursued long, nor sought for; they have shot up and blossomed under my feet like the daisies on my grassplot. I have ever found my greatest happiness in a garden over which I could have jumped—in a chamber in which I could not take three paces. That chamber, I remember it still; I have but to shut my eyes to see it; it appears to me that I see it in my heart. It was furnished with chairs covered with yellow Utrecht velvet, with a table near the chimney, and an old piano between the two windows. One day she endeavoured to teach me to play with one finger, an air which she sometimes sang, and which I passionately admired. Her father was seated in the chimney-corner reading his newspaper. First, she played the air for me, then she bade me try. I could not get over more than the first three notes; she played it more slowly—but I succeeded no better. She laughed at my want of skill. Then she took my hand to make me strike the notes with my finger: it was the first time our hands had met. I trembled: she ceased to laugh, and withdrew her hand, and we remained both silent. The day was closing, and mixed a profound meditation with our emotions. Our looks met: it appeared to me that I became her, and that she be- came me; that our blood mingled in our veins—our thoughts in our souls. Two large tears fell from her eyes, and rolled down her cheeks as two shining pearls of dew in the sweet morning on a rose. Then her father, whom, with all the rest of the world, we had forgotten, let the paper fall which he could no longer see to read, and told his daughter to light the lamp. “And.you cannot see any more than I can,” he added, “for it is some time since I heard the piano.” 70 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. Well! to obtain this happiness—and I remember no other so great in my life—I had but to descend a flight of about fourteen steps, and come from my own chamber into that of the yellow chairs. And my chamber, so small, so poorly furnished, what joys it has contained! It was there that I made for her ten thousand verses, not one of which she ever saw; it was there I wrote to her so many letters; it was there that I re-read so many times the few letters she ever wrote me, that the Alexandrian library itself could not have supplied me with more reading. And that staircase—those fourteen steps which separated us—how many times have I descended it and ascended it to meet her, to meet her father or their servant, to see her door, to see the bell she had touched, the rush mat upon which she had placed her feet! and all in the hope that she would recognise my step, that she would hear me ascend and descend, that she might say, ‘ There he is!” I travelled three hundred leagues on that staircase, my friend, and at each step met with a happiness, or, at least, an emotion. How beautiful were the flowers of the spring of our life, and how they have faded! how many things are dead within us, for which we never dream of wearing mourning! so far from that, we mistake our mutilations for useful retrench- ments, we take pride from our losses, we call our infirmities virtues; the stomach no longer digests properly, and we call ourselves sober ; our blood is chilled, and we say we have left off loving, when, actually, love has left us; our hair, our teeth die, and yet we seldom think that we must soon die altogether. We worry, we torment ourselves for a future which everything tells us we shall never see. I knew a man of eighty years of age, who frequently said—* Well, I really must set about thinking of my future!” And yet we are not without warnings; everything speaks of death. This house we live in was built for a man long since dead, by masons who are likewise dead. These trees, under whose shade we indulge in our reveries, were planted by gardeners who are dead. The painters who created the pictures on our walls are dead. Our clothes, our shoes, are made from WHO ARE MAD, AND WHO SANE, 71 the wool and the hides of dead animals. The boat in which we glide between the river’s green banks—why, it was a dead tree that supplied the planks for it. This fire before which we chat, is fed by the members of carcases of trees, Your joyous festivals, your every day repasts, present to your eyes and your appetites portions of dead animals, This wine, of which you boast the age, reminds you that he who gathered the vintage, he who made the corks, that he who bottled it, and all who were then living, are dead. And in the evening, when you go to the theatre to see Cinna or Mithridates repre- sented, those personages you look upon, are they not the shades of the dead whom you evoke that they may come and gambol before you and amuse you? When these thoughts come over me, I am sewed with a profound horror for all trouble, anxiety, and agitation; I only think of living quietly, without a care for the present or the future, and I wonder at the extravagance of all those men who, having but two hours to sleep, pass those two hours in making and turning over their bed. It appears to me that I then see all these people who are elbowing each other, in order to attain I don’t know what, to be furious madmen ; and I became of the opinion of that philosopher, who pre- tended to have discovered the true reason for there being, in all great cities, a lunatic asylum: it is, that by shutting up some poor creatures under the name of madmen, strangers might believe that all who are out of that hospital are sane. ee HF ga Fee LETTER XI. UPON MY BACK. I am, at this moment, stretched upon a grassy bank sprinkled with violets, beneath a great oak which shelters me from the sun; I cannot imagine any change sufficiently agreeable to induce me to quit this position. JI am upon my back, more than half buried in grass; my two arms, crossed behind my head, elevate it a little; the thick foliage of the oak forms a green transparent tent over me; between certain branches T catch blue patches of the heavens, I hear a thousand noises in the air, a chaffinch twitters at the summit of the tree, bees buzz around me, some soft puffs of a cooling wind just stir the trees; I listen, and I look around me. Across the blue heavens pass long flocks of silk, whiter than anything we are acquainted with, and which float languidly in the air, sinking and rising; this is what the country people call the Virgin’s thread; saying that they are threads escaped from the distaff LOVE AMONG FLOWERS. 73 of the Virgin Mary. I love not to have such associations destroyed, and it was by no means a pleasurable discovery to me, when I one day ascertained that these threads were pro- duced by a species of spider.. A grain of groundsel sur- mounted by a little downy parachute, sails over me through’ the air, to go and sow itself at a distance; a seed of the wall- flower, flat and light, is carried by the wind to the top of an old wall, or into the fissures of the tower of the church, to decorate them with its golden stars. There is a bee just gone by, with its feet laden with the yellow dust it has collected: from the stamens of flowers; and the wind blows the yellow dust about in all directions. I have seen flowers which contain in their corollas both the husband and wife; I have seen others which bear them sepa- rated, but upon the same plant; there are, however, trees and flowers which only produce separately, males or females, and these are frequently planted by chance at a great distance from each other; there would be no loves, no marriages, no reproduction, but the air takes upon it the charge of bearing the caresses of the husband to his spouse, in the form of those little yellow bags, which contain a fructifying powder. Bees and other insects which fly from flower to flower, are little messengers who carry perfumed kisses from the bride- groom to the bride; it is thus they repay the hospitality they receive in the rich corollas and nectaries filled with delicious honey, and thus the wife receives in her bosom the message of her absent husband. The facility which nature has accorded to plants to corre- spond thus intimately through the track of the air, and by the means of insects, bears with it consequences of which certainly we ought not to complain; but which, nevertheless, in a human point of view, must appear as a means of diseases. I will show you in what its consequences consist, There is a white pink, which, if left to the regular course of nature, would only bear white pinks; but frequently, by the intervention of bees or other insects, the white pinks become red, or white spotted with red. It is to such errors, if errors they can be called, which produce such beautiful effects, that we owe the numerous varieties of flowers with which our gardens are ornamented. 74 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN, This, besides, has not the same inconveniences as among men; in the first place, love among flowers is not selfish ; they are happy in loving and blooming, and are perfectly unacquainted with jealousy, that degrading feeling composed of avarice, pride, and angry love. It is not likewise as in the poor human families called rich, in which one child, who happens to come first or be a favourite, is a disinheritor of the others ; the riches which flowers leave to their children are immense and eternal; they consist of the earth, the sun, the air, the shower and the dew; there is nothing to dread, there will always be plenty for every one. Here passes in its turn an ichneumon, similar in form to that which I saw depositing its eggs in the body of a cater- pillar; only this is much larger. It also will deposit its eggs in the body of another insect. This insect is a worm destined to become a tolerably large beetle. This beetle knows that its little ones have enemies; therefore, it is in a place which appears inaccessible that it takes care to conceal its eggs. It deposits them under the bark of trees. Alas! useless pre- caution, fruitless cares! There is the ichneumon, prowling around the oak beneath which I recline ; it alights and searches the trunk of the tree; it stops. The wimble which it bears at the extremity of its body divides into three parts, of which two form the sheath of the third; it plunges its naked weapon, finer than a hair, into the bark. The task is long and wearisome, but it finishes by succeeding. It remains motionless for some seconds, and slowly withdraws its saw. If I pleased, I could lay hold of it with my fingers; it isa fortunate thing that no bird surprises it whilst thus engaged. But the wimble is withdrawn and returned to its case. The ichneumon flies away. By an unknown art, by a wonderful instinct, it has been able, through the thick bark of the oak, to ascertain the spot where the beetle had concealed its egg, which is become a worm; and the ichneumon, in its turn, has deposited its egg in the body of this worm, which will serve it for pasture. Butterflies of all colours pass before my eyes, sporting about in the air. I see the Red Admiral,* which is black, and bears upon its wings bands or stripes of a fiery red. When * Vanessa atalanta.—Ep. : JEWISH TRADITION. 7 it was a caterpillar, it was brown, marked with a line of yellow spots on each side, and covered with hairs. It lived then upon the nettle, and delighted in leaves which it no longer cares about, but which it will take care to return to when the time shall come for it to lay its eggs, in order that the little caterpillars which issue from them may find at their birth a home and food that will suit them. How is it possible to paint all that I see passing before me, all that moves in the air, and also all that I cannot see ? Through a little space between the leaves of the oak, the sun darts a white, brilliant ray, and myriads of little flying creatures sport in that ray. They are so small that they are no longer visible if a cloud for a moment obscures the sun and extinguishes its beam. Myriads of animals have been discovered in a drop of water, by means of the microscope, because a drop of water can be kept steady under the glass of the lens. If we were able, in a similar manner, to isolate a drop of air, it is more than probable we should perceive thousands of insects which escape our sight. There are ichneumons,—we have seen them,— which lay their egg in the egg of a butterfly. Who can venture to say that the egg of the ichneumon is not pierced in its turn by another insect which we do not see? We should have been wrong, before the invention of the microscope, in denying the existence of all the otherwise im- perceptible insects which have been revealed by its means. I would not dare to assert that there are not other tribes which the microscope even cannot show us. Who knows if those maladies which regularly prevail in certain seasons, or which affect us irregularly at distant periods, as plagues and epidemics, are not caused by insects which we respire in the air? We find it related in an old collection of Jewish traditions, that Titus boasted of having conquered the God of the Jews, at Jerusalem. ‘Then a terrible voice was heard, which said: “Wretched man, the smallest of my creatures shall triumph over thee.”