"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, to ask