The "dear master" had long ago forgotten the little professor of Ajaccio,
and his welcome was by no means such as Fabre had the right to expect. Far
from insisting, he was disheartened, perhaps a little humiliated, and
hastened to take his leave.

The theses which Fabre brought with him, and which, he had thought, ought
to lead him one day to a university professorship, did not, as a matter of
fact, contain anything very essentially original.

He had been attracted, indeed fascinated, by all the singularities
presented by the strange family of the orchids; the asymmetry of their
blossoms, the unusual structure of their pollen, and their innumerable
seeds; but as for the curious rounded and duplicated tubercles which many
of them bore at their base, what precisely were they? The greatest
botanists--de Candolle, A. de Jussieu--had perceived in them nothing more
than roots. Fabre demonstrated in his thesis that these singular organs are
in reality merely buds, true branches or shoots, modified and disguised,
analogous to the metamorphosed tubercle of the potato. (4/9.)

He added also a curious memoir on the phosphorescence of the agaric of the
olive-tree, a phenomenon to which he was to return at a later date.

In the field of zoology his scalpel revealed the complicated structure of
the reproductive organs of the Centipedes (Millepedes), hitherto so
confused and misunderstood; as also certain peculiarities of the
development of these curious creatures, so interesting from the point of
view of the zoological philosopher (4/10.), for he had become expert in
handling not only the magnifying glass, which was always with him, but also
the microscope, which discovers so many infinite wonders in the lowest
creatures, yet which was not of particular service in any of the beautiful