beings.  I pack it Pretty firmly in a glass vase; I plant in it a little tuft of thyme; I sow in it a few grains of wheat.  There is no hole at the bottom of the vase, although there should be one for the benefit of the thyme and the corn; but the captives would find it and escape by it.  The plantation and the crop will suffer from this lack of drainage, but at least I am sure of recovering my larvae with the help of patience and a magnifying-glass.  Moreover, I shall go gently in the matter of irrigation, giving only just enough water to save the plants from perishing.

When all is in order, and when the wheat is beginning to shoot, I place six young larvae of the Cigale on the surface of the soil.  The tiny creatures begin to pace hither and thither; they soon explore the surface of their world, and some try vainly to climb the sides of the vase.  Not one of them seems inclined to bury itself; so that I ask myself anxiously what can be the object of their prolonged and active explorations.  Two hours go by, but their wanderings continue.

What do they want?  Food?  I offer them some tiny bulbs with bundles of sprouting roots, a few fragments of leaves and some fresh blades of grass.  Nothing tempts them; nothing brings them to a standstill.  Apparently they are seeking for a favourable point before descending into the earth.  But there is no need for this hesitating exploration on the soil I have prepared for them; the whole area, or so it seems to me, lends itself excellently to the operations which I am expecting to see them commence.  Yet apparently it will not answer the purpose.

Under natural conditions a little wandering might well be indispensable.  Spots as soft as my bed of earth from the roots of the briar-heather, purged of all hard bodies and finely sifted, are rare in nature.  Coarse soils are more usual, on which the tiny creatures could make no impression.  The larva must wander at hazard, must make a pilgrimage of indefinite duration before finding a favourable place.  Very many, no doubt, perish, exhausted by their fruitless search.  A voyage of exploration in a country a few inches wide evidently forms part of the curriculum of young Cigales.  In my glass prison, so luxuriously furnished, this pilgrimage is useless.  Never mind:  it must be accomplished according to the consecrated rites.

At last my wanderers grow less excited.  I see them attack the earth with the curved talons of their fore-limbs, digging their claws into it and making such an excavation as the point of a thick needle would enter.  With a magnifying-glass I watch their picks at work.  I see their talons raking atom after atom of earth to the surface.  In a few minutes there is a little gaping well.  The larva climbs downwards and buries itself, henceforth invisible.

On the morrow I turn out the contents of the vase without breaking the mould, which is held together by the roots of the thyme and the wheat.  I find all my larvae at the bottom, arrested by the glass.  In twenty-four hours they had sunk themselves through the entire thickness of the earth—­a matter of some four inches.  But for obstacle at the bottom they would have sunk even further.