re to the wood. Soon I have nothing left, in the way of their
regulation diet, to offer my famished captives. I know that all the
lilies, native or exotic, the Turk's cap lily, or Martagon, the lily
of Chalcedon, the tiger lily and many others, are to their taste; I do
not forget that the crown imperial fritillary and the Persian
fritillary are equally welcome; but most of these delicate plants have
refused the hospitality of my two acres of pebbles and those which it
is more or less possible for me to grow are now as tattered as the
common lily. There is not a patch of green left on them.

In botany the lily gives its name to the family of the Liliaceae, of
which it is the leading representative. Those who feed upon the lily
ought also, in the absence of anything better, to accept the other
plants of the same group. This is my opinion at first; it is not that
of the Crioceris, who knows more than I do about the virtues of
plants.

The family of the Liliaceae is subdivided into three tribes: the
lilies, the daffodils and the asparaguses. Not any of the daffodil
tribe suit my famishing prisoners, who allow themselves to die of
inanition on the leaves of the following genera, the only varieties
with which the modest resources of my garden have allowed me to
experiment: asphodel, funkia, or niobe, agapanthus, or African lily,
tritelia, hemerocallis, or day lily, tritoma, garlic, ornithogalum, or
star of Bethlehem, squill, hyacinth, muscari, or grape-hyacinth. I
record, for whom it may concern, this profound contempt of the
Crioceris for the daffodils. An insect's opinion is not to be
despised: it tells us that we should obtain a more natural arrangement
by separating the daffodils farther from the lilies.

In the first of the three tribes, the classic white lily, the plant
preferred by the insect, takes the chief place; next come the other
lilies and the fritillaries, a diet almost as much sought after; and
lastly the tulips, which the season is too far advanced to allow me to
submit for the approval of the Crioceris.

The third tribe had a great surprise in store for me. The red
Crioceris fed, though with a very scornful tooth, on the foliage of
the asparagus, the favourite dish of the Field Crioceris and the
Twelve-spotted Crioceris. On the other hand, she feasted rapturously
on the lily of the valley (_Convallaria maialis_) and on Solomon's
seal (_Polygonatum vulgare_), both of which are so different from the
lily