nstinct which so many of them exhibit? Is the mere
power of feeling sensations sufficient to make them garner up food
during the summer, on which food they may subsist in winter? Does not
this involve the power of comparing dates, and the idea of a coming
future, an '_inquietude raisonnee_'? Why do we find in the hole of the
field-mouse enough acorns to keep him until the following summer? Why do
we find such an abundant store of honey and wax within the bee-hive? Why
do ants store food? Why should birds make nests if they do not know that
they will have need of them? Whence arise the stories that we hear of
the wisdom of foxes, which hide their prey in different spots, that they
may find it at their need and live upon it for days together? Or of the
subtilty of owls, which husband their store of mice by biting off their
feet, so that they cannot run away? Or of the marvellous penetration of
bees, which know beforehand that their queen should lay so many eggs in
such and such a time, and that so many of these eggs should be of a kind
which will develop into drones, and so many more of such another kind as
should become neuters; and who in consequence of this their
foreknowledge build so many larger cells for the first, and so many
smaller for the second?"[77]

Buffon answers these questions thus:--

"Before replying to them," he says, "we should make sure of the facts
themselves;--are they to be depended upon? Have they been narrated by
men of intelligence and philosophers, or are they popular fables only?"
(How many delightful stories of the same character does he not soon
proceed to tell us himself). "I am persuaded that all these pretended
wonders will disappear, and the cause of each one of them be found upon
due examination. But admitting their truth for a moment, and granting to
the narrators of them that animals have a presentiment, a forethought,
and even a certainty concerning coming events, does it therefore follow
that this should spring from intelligence? If so, theirs is assuredly
much greater than our own. For our foreknowledge amounts to conjecture
only; the vaunted light of our reason doth but suffice to show us a
little probability; whereas the forethought of animals is unerring, and
must spring from some principle far higher than any we know of through
our own experience. Does not such a consequence, I ask, _prove repugnant
alike to religion and common sense_?"[78]

This is Buffon's way. Whenever he