These facts seem to demonstrate that if S. flavipennis can compute exactly how many victims to catch, she cannot attain to counting how many reach their destination, as if the creature had no other guide as to number than an irresistible impulse leading her to seek game a fixed number of times. When this number of journeys has been made,—when the Sphex has done all that is possible to store the captured prey,—her work is done, and the cell is closed, whether completely provisioned or not. Nature has endowed her with only those faculties called for under ordinary circumstances by the interests of the larva, and these blind faculties, unmodified by experience, being sufficient for the preservation of the race, the animal cannot go farther.
I end then as I began: instinct knows everything in the unchanging paths laid out for it; beyond them it is entirely ignorant. The sublime inspirations of science, the astonishing inconsistencies of stupidity, are both its portion, according as the creature acts under normal conditions or under accidental ones. [[179]]
XIII
AN ASCENT OF MONT VENTOUX
By its isolation, which leaves it freely exposed on every side to the influence of atmospheric agencies, and from the height which makes it the culminating point of France on this side of the frontiers of Alps or Pyrenees, the bare Provençal mountain, Mont Ventoux, lends itself remarkably to studies of plant species according to climate. At the base flourish the tender olive and that crowd of small semi-woody plants whose aromatic scent requires the sun of southern regions. On the summit, where snow lies at least half the year, the ground is covered with a northern flora, partly borrowed from the arctic regions. Half a day’s journey in a vertical line brings before one’s eyes a succession of the chief vegetable types met with in the same meridian in long travels from south to north. When you start your feet crush the perfumed thyme which forms a continuous carpet on the lower slopes; some hours later they tread the dusky cushions of Saxifraga oppositifolia, the first plant seen by a botanist who lands in July on the shores of Spitzbergen. In the hedges below you had gathered the [[180]]scarlet blossoms of the pomegranate, which loves an African sky; up above you find a hairy little poppy sheltering its stalks under a covering of small stony fragments, and which opens its large yellow corolla in the icy solitudes of Greenland and the North Cape, just as it does on the highest slopes of Ventoux.
Such contrasts have always a new charm, and twenty-five ascents have not yet brought me satiety. In August 1865 I undertook the twenty-third. We were eight persons—three who came to botanise, five attracted by a mountain expedition and the panorama of the heights. None of those who were not botanists have ever again desired to accompany me. In truth, the expedition is a rough one, and a sunrise does not atone for the fatigue endured.
The best comparison for Mont Ventoux is that of a heap of stones broken up to mend the roads. Raise this heap steeply up to two kilometres, and give it a base in proportion, cast on the white of its limestone the blackness of forests, and you get a clear idea of the general look of the mountain. This heap of débris—sometimes little chips, sometimes huge masses of rock—rises from the plain without preliminary slopes or successive terraces to render ascent less trying by dividing it into stages. The climb begins at once, by rocky paths, the best of which is not as good as a road newly laid with stones, and rising ever rougher and rougher to the summit, a height of 1912 metres. Fresh lawns, glad rivulets, the ample shade of ancient trees—all that gives such a charm to other mountains is here unknown, replaced by an endless bed of calcareous rock broken [[181]]into scales which yield under one’s feet with a sharp, almost metallic sound. For cascades Mont Ventoux has streams of stones, the sound of which, as they roll downward, replaces the murmur of falling water.
We have reached Bedoin, at the foot of the mountain, arrangements with the guide are completed, the hour of departure is settled, provisions chosen and prepared. Let us try to sleep, for the next night will be a sleepless one on the mountain. But to fall asleep was the difficulty; I have never achieved it, and this is the chief cause of fatigue. I would therefore advise any readers who propose to botanise on Mont Ventoux not to arrive at Bedoin on a Sunday night. They will thus avoid the bustle of a country inn, endless conversations at the top of the speakers’ voices, the echo of billiard balls, the clinking of glasses, with the drinking-songs, the nocturnal couplets of passers-by, the bellowing of wind instruments at the neighbouring ball, and the other tribulations inseparable from this holy day of rest and enjoyment. Could one sleep there on other nights? I hope so, but cannot answer for it. I never closed an eye. All night long the rusty spit, labouring for our benefit, groaned under my bedroom; only a thin plank separated me from that diabolical machine.
But already the sky was growing light; a donkey brayed under the windows; the hour had come to rise, and we might as well not have gone to bed at all. Provisions and baggage were loaded, our guide cried “Ja! hi!” and we set off. At the head of the caravan walked Triboulet with his mule and ass—Triboulet, the eldest and chief of the Ventoux guides. [[182]]My botanical colleagues scrutinised the vegetation on either side of the road by the early light; the others talked. I followed the party, a barometer slung over my shoulder, a note-book and pencil in my hand.