Note 7 — Chapter XIII · THE SENSE OF SMELL
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos translation
They find everything there: old Magpies’ nests, formed of bundles of twigs; Jays squabbling with one another, after filling their crops with acorns on the oaks hard by; Rabbits suddenly starting out of a rosemary-bush, showing their little white upturned scuts; Geotrupes7 hoarding away food for the winter and heaping up their rubbish on the threshold of the burrow. And then lovely sand, soft to the touch, easy to dig into tunnels, easy to build into rows of huts which we thatch with moss and surmount with a bit of reed by way of a chimney; and the delicious lunch off an apple to the sound of the Æolian harps softly sighing through the pine-needles!