One evening I had been working late in my laboratory fooling round with
some gin and other chemicals, and in leaving the room I tripped over a
nine of diamonds which someone had left lying on the floor and knocked
over my card catalogue containing the names and addresses of all the
larvae worth knowing in North America. The cards went everywhere.

I was too tired to stop to pick them up that night, and went sobbing to
bed, just as mad as I could be. As I went, however, I noticed the wasp
flying about in circles over the scattered cards. "Maybe Pudge will pick
them up," I said half-laughingly to myself, never thinking for one
moment that such would be the case.

When I came down the next morning Pudge was still asleep over in her
box, evidently tired out. And well she might have been. For there on the
floor lay the cards scattered all about just as I had left them the
night before. The faithful little insect had buzzed about all night
trying to come to some decision about picking them up and arranging them
in the catalogue-box, and then, figuring out for herself that, as she
knew practically nothing about larvae of any sort except wasp-larvae,
she would probably make more of a mess of rearranging them than as if
she left them on the floor for me to fix. It was just too much for her
to tackle, and, discouraged, she went over and lay down in her box,
where she cried herself to sleep.

If this is not an answer to Professor Bouvier's statement that insects
have no reasoning power, I do not know what is.