ruinous lack of organization which I expected to find, my broods
show me in their glass prison an exceedingly well regulated
workshop. One insect, one only, works at perforating the cork.
Patiently, with its mandibles, grain by grain, it digs a tunnel the
width of its body. The gallery is so narrow that, in order to
return to the tube, the worker has to move backwards. It is a slow
process; and it takes hours and hours to dig the hole, a hard job
for the frail miner.

Should her fatigue become too great, the excavator leaves the
forefront and mingles with the crowd, to polish and dust herself.
Another, the first neighbor at hand, at once takes her place and is
herself relieved by a third when her task is done. Others again
take their turn, always one at a time, so much so that the works
are never at a standstill and never overcrowded. Meanwhile, the
multitude keeps out of the way, quietly and patiently. There is no
anxiety as to the deliverance. Success will come: of that they are
all convinced. While waiting, one washes her antennae by passing
them through her mouth, another polishes her wings with her hind
legs, another frisks about to while away the period of inaction.
Some are making love, a sovran means of killing time, whether one
be born that day or twenty years ago.

Some, I said, make love. These favored ones are rare; they hardly
count. Is it through indifference? No, but the gallants are
lacking. The sexes are very unequally represented in the
population of a cell: the males are in a wretched minority and
sometimes even completely absent. This poverty did not escape the
older observers. Brulle [Gaspard August Bru11e (1809-1873)], the
author of many works on natural history and one of the founders of