by dull, stay-at-home reality. The
jungles of India, the virgin forests of Brazil, the towering crests of
the Andes, beloved by the Condor, were reduced, as a field for
exploration, to a patch of pebbles enclosed within four walls.

Heaven forfend that I should complain! The gathering of ideas does not
necessarily imply distant expeditions. Jean-Jacques Rousseau[1]
herborized with the bunch of chick-weed whereon he fed his Canary;
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre[2] discovered a world on a strawberry-plant
that grew by accident in a corner of his window; Xavier de Maistre,[3]
using an arm-chair by way of post-chaise, made one of the most famous
of journeys around his room.

[Footnote 1: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), author of the
_Confessions_, _La Nouvelle Heloise_, etc.--_Translator's Note_.]

[Footnote 2: Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814),
author of _Paul et Virginie_, _La Chaumiere idienne_ and _Etudes de la
nature_.--_Translator's Note_.]

[Footnote 3: Xavier de Maistre (1763-1852), best known for his _Voyage
autour de ma chambre_ (1795).--_Translator's Note_.]

This manner of seeing country is within my means, always excepting the
post-chaise, which is too difficult to drive through the bushes. I go
the circuit of my enclosure over and over again, a hundred times, by
short stages; I stop here and I stop there; patiently, I put questions
and, at long intervals, I receive some scrap of a reply.

The smallest insect village has become familiar to me: I know each
fruit-branch where the Praying Mantis[4] perches; each bush where the
pale Italian Cricket[5] strums amid the calmness of the summer nights;
each downy plant scraped by the Anthidium, that maker of cotton bags;
each cluster of lilac worked by the Megachile, the Leaf-cutter.

[Footnote 4: Cf. _The Life of the Grasshopper_: chaps. vi. to
ix.--_Translator's Note_.]

[Footnote 5: Cf. _idem_: chap. xvi.--_Translator's Note_.]

If cruising among the nooks and corners of the garden do not suffice,
a longer voyage shows ample profit. I double the cape of the
neighbouring hedges and, at a few hundred yards, enter into relations
with the Sacred Beetle,[6] the Capricorn, the Geotrupes,[7] the
Copris,[8] the Decticus,[9] the Cricket,[10] the Green
Grasshopper,[11] in short, with a host of tribes the telling of whose
story would exhaust a lifetime. Certainly, I have enough and even too
much to do with my near neighbours, without leaving home to r