hing to tell except the following detail. Yesterday I
did not remove the trace left by the few caterpillars who made their
way to the inside of the vase. This trace, together with a junction
connecting it with the circular road, is discovered in the course of
the morning. Half the troop takes advantage of it to visit the earth in
the pot and climb the palm; the other half remains on the ledge and
continues to walk along the old rail. In the afternoon the band of
emigrants rejoins the others, the circuit is completed and things
return to their original condition.

We come to the fifth day. The night frost becomes more intense, without
however as yet reaching the greenhouse. It is followed by bright
sunshine in a calm and limpid sky. As soon as the sun's rays have
warmed the panes a little, the caterpillars, lying in heaps, wake up
and resume their evolutions on the ledge of the vase. This time the
fine order of the beginning is disturbed and a certain disorder becomes
manifest, apparently an omen of deliverance near at hand. The
scouting-path inside the vase, which was upholstered in silk yesterday
and the day before, is to-day followed to its origin on the rim by a
part of the band and is then deserted after a short loop. The other
caterpillars follow the usual ribbon. The result of this bifurcation is
two almost equal files, walking along the ledge in the same direction,
at a short distance from each other, sometimes meeting, separating
farther on, in every case with some lack of order.

Weariness increases the confusion. The crippled, who refuse to go on,
are many. Breaches increase; files are split up into sections each of
which has its leader, who pokes the front of his body this way and that
to explore the ground. Everything seems to point to the disintegration
which will bring safety. My hopes are once more disappointed. Before
the night the single file is reconstituted and the invincible gyration
resumed.

Heat comes, just as suddenly as the cold did. To-day, the 4th of
February, is a beautiful, mild day. The greenhouse is full of life.
Numerous festoons of caterpillars, issuing from the nests, meander
along the sand on the shelf. Above them, at every moment, the ring on
the ledge of the vase breaks up and comes together again. For the first
time I see daring leaders who, drunk with heat, standing only on their
hinder prolegs at the extreme edge of the earthenware rim, fling
themselves forward into space, twis