At last we were there. We took refuge in the rustic chapel of Sainte-Croix to take breath and counteract the nipping morning air by a pull at the gourd, which this time was drained to the last drop. Soon the sun rose. Ventoux projected to the extreme limits of the horizon its triangular shadow, whose sides became brightly tinged with violet by the effect of the diffracted rays. To the south and west stretched misty plains, where, when the sun was higher in the heavens, we should be able to make out the Rhône, looking like a silver thread. On the north and east, under our feet, lay an [[213]]enormous bank of clouds, a sort of ocean of cotton-wool, whence peeped, like islands of slag, the dark summits of the lower mountains. A few tops, with their trailing glaciers, gleamed in the direction of the Alps.
But botany called our attention and we had to tear ourselves from this magic spectacle. The time of our ascent, in August, was a little late in the year; many plants were no longer in flower. Would you do some really fruitful herborizing? Be there in the first fortnight of July; above all, be ahead of the grazing herds: where the Sheep has browsed you will gather none but wretched leavings. While still spared by the hungry flocks, the top of the Ventoux in July is a literal bed of flowers; its loose stony surface is studded with them. My memory recalls, all streaming with the morning dew, those elegant tufts of Androsace villosa, with its pink-centred white blooms; the Mont-Cenis violet, spreading its great blue blossoms over the chips of limestone; the spikenard valerian, which blends the sweet perfume of its flowers with the offensive odour of its roots; the wedge-leaved globularia, forming close carpets of bright green dotted with blue capitula; the Alpine forget-me-not, whose blue rivals that of the skies; the Candolla candytuft, whose tiny stalk bears a dense head of little white [[214]]flowers and goes winding among the loose stones; the opposite-leaved saxifrage and the musky saxifrage, both of them packed into little dark cushions, studded in the first case with purple flowers and in the second with white flowers washed with yellow. When the sun’s rays are hotter, we shall see fluttering idly from one tuft of blossom to another a magnificent Butterfly with white wings adorned with four bright-crimson spots, surrounded with black. ’Tis Parnassius Apollo, the beautiful occupant of the Alpine solitudes, near the eternal snows. Her caterpillar lives on the saxifrages.
Here let us end this sketch of the sweet joys that await the naturalist on the summit of Mont Ventoux and return to the Hairy Ammophila, who was lurking yesterday in her legions under the shelter of a stone when the misty rain came and enshrouded us. [[215]]
Chapter xii
THE TRAVELLERS
I have told in the last chapter how, on the ridges of Mont Ventoux, at a height of nearly 6000 feet, I had one of those entomological windfalls which would be rich in results if they occurred often enough to serve the purpose of continuous study. Unfortunately, mine was a solitary instance and I despair of ever repeating it. I can therefore only base conjectures on it, in the hope that future observers will replace my surmises with certainties.
Under the shelter of a broad, flat stone I discovered some hundreds of Ammophilæ (A. hirsuta), heaped one on top of the other almost as closely as the Bees in a swarm. As soon as I lifted the stone, all this little hairy world began to run about, without making any attempt to fly away. I shifted the mass by handfuls: not one of the Wasps looked as though she wished to desert the rest. They seemed indissolubly united by common interests; none of them would go unless all went. I examined [[216]]with every possible care the flat stone that sheltered them, as well as the ground underneath and just around it, and discovered not a thing to tell me the cause of this strange assemblage. Having nothing better left to do, I tried to count them; and it was then that the clouds came and put an end to my observations and plunged us into that darkness of which I have described the anxious consequences. At the first drops of rain, before leaving the spot, I hastened to put back the stone and replace the Ammophilæ in their shelter. I give myself a good mark, which I hope that the reader will confirm, for having taken the precaution not to leave the poor insects whom my curiosity had disturbed at the mercy of the downpour.
The Hairy Ammophila is not rare in the plains, but she is always found singly by the side of the paths or on the sandy slopes, now engaged in digging her well, anon busily carting her heavy caterpillar. She lives alone, like the Languedocian Sphex; and it was a great surprise to me to come upon such a number of this species collected under one and the same stone almost at the top of Mont Ventoux. Instead of the isolated specimen which I had known hitherto, a crowded company presented itself to my eyes. Let us try to trace the probable causes of this agglomeration. [[217]]
The Hairy Ammophila is one of the very rare exceptions among the Digger-wasps in the matter of nest-building; she gets hers ready in the early days of spring. Towards the end of March, if the season be mild, or at latest in the first fortnight of April, when the Crickets assume the adult form and laboriously cast the skin of infancy on the threshold of their homes, when the poet’s-narcissus puts forth its first flowers and the Bunting utters his long-drawn call from the top of the poplars in the fields, Ammophila hirsuta is at work digging a home for her grubs and victualling it, whereas the other Ammophilæ and the various Hunting Wasps in general postpone this labour until autumn, during September and October. This early nidification, preceding by six months the date adopted by the vast majority, at once suggests a few reflections.