my 13 year old joe has worked his way through all of gerald durrell’s natural history adventures in corfu, and just began listening to e. o. wilson’s letters to a young scientist. he is suddenly on fire for science and biology, and after three months of having to pry him from his iPad, the difference is profound and heartening to his mother the scientist, and his father the reader/writer. today in a fit of daring and curiosity, he wrote an email to the professor emeritus of the entomology department of montpellier university asking him to help identify two insects joe had collected and couldn’t identify. we tried to prepare joe for the possibility that the professor emeritus of entomology at montpellier university might not have the bandwidth to reply to questions from a 13 year old american. approximately an hour later we received a reply from the professor, who identified both bugs, thanked joe for his interest in entomology, and directed him to a website where he might inform himself further on the arthropods of mediterranean france. i share this not to draw attention to what might, in the end, be a fleeting distraction in the arc of joe’s life. but as a way of praising the spirit of science, which tends to breed people like a professor emeritus of entomology who has time to share his strange and obscure intellectual passion with a 13 year old foreign stranger. although i accept that the quick response could also be due to another facet of being the professor emeritus of entomology: you don’t get a lot of fan mail.

three languedocien acorns: white oak, holm oak, kermes oak

autignac, france