After dinner there is dancing on the court by the young people. Anyway,
Daddy is getting pretty old for tennis.




XII

DO INSECTS THINK?


In a recent book entitled, "The Psychic Life of Insects," Professor
Bouvier says that we must be careful not to credit the little winged
fellows with intelligence when they behave in what seems like an
intelligent manner. They may be only reacting. I would like to confront
the Professor with an instance of reasoning power on the part of an
insect which can not be explained away in any such manner.

During the summer of 1899, while I was at work on my treatise "Do Larvae
Laugh," we kept a female wasp at our cottage in the Adirondacks. It
really was more like a child of our own than a wasp, except that it
_looked_ more like a wasp than a child of our own. That was one of the
ways we told the difference.

It was still a young wasp when we got it (thirteen or fourteen years
old) and for some time we could not get it to eat or drink, it was so
shy. Since it was a, female, we decided to call it Miriam, but soon the
children's nickname for it--"Pudge"--became a fixture, and "Pudge" it
was from that time on.