ppy combination of circumstances: he must know
how to produce other combinations, vary them as much as possible and
test them by substitution and interchange. Lastly, to provide science
with a solid basis of facts, he must experiment. In this way, the
evidence of formal records will one day dispel the fantastic legends
with which our books are crowded: the Sacred Beetle (A Dung-beetle who
rolls the manure of cattle into balls for his own consumption and that
of his young. Cf. "Insect Life", by J.H. Fabre, translated by the author
of "Mademoiselle Mori": chapters 1 and 2; and "The Life and Love of the
Insect", by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos:
chapters 1 to 4.--Translator's Note.) calling on his comrades to lend a
helping hand in dragging his pellet out of a rut; the Sphex (A species
of Hunting Wasp. Cf. "Insect Life": chapters 6 to 12.--Translator's
Note.) cutting up her Fly so as to be able to carry him despite
the obstacle of the wind; and all the other fallacies which are the
stock-in-trade of those who wish to see in the animal world what is not
really there. In this way, again, materials will be prepared which
will one day be worked up by the hand of a master and consign hasty and
unfounded theories to oblivion.

Reaumur, as a rule, confines himself to stating facts as he sees them
in the normal course of events and does not try to probe deeper into the
insect's ingenuity by means of artificially produced conditions. In his
time, everything had yet to be done; and the harvest was so great that
the illustrious harvester went straight to what was most urgent, the
gathering of the crop, and left his successors to examine the grain and
the ear in detail. Nevertheless, in connection with the Chalicodoma of
the Walls, he mentions an experiment made by his friend, Duhamel. (Henri
Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1700-1781), a distinguished writer on botany
and agriculture.--Translator's Note.) He tells us how a Mason-bee's nest
was enclosed in a glass funnel, the mouth of which was covered merely
with a bit of gauze. From it there issued three males, who, after
vanquishing mortar as hard as stone, either never thought of piercing
the flimsy gauze or else deemed the work beyond their strength. The
three Bees died under the funnel. Reaumur adds that insects generally
know only how to do what they have to do in the ordinary course of
nature.

The experiment does not satisfy me, for two reasons: first,