One of these Hymenoptera whose impeccable science we were admiring just now, a Languedocian Sphex, is busy closing the burrow in which she has laid her egg with its store of game. We brush her aside, and plunder her nest before her eyes. Directly the passage is free, she enters and remains for a few moments. Then she emerges and proceeds to stop up the cell, as though nothing were the matter, as though she had not found her burrow empty, as though the work of closing the cell had still a motive.[9]
The Mason-Bee, excellently endowed in the matter of boring, emerges from her nest [[340]]of mortar by piercing the earthen dome which covers it. Let us cover the nest from which the Bee is about to emerge with a little paper bag. If the bag is placed in contact with the nest so as to make one piece with it, so to speak, the Bee perforates it and liberates herself. If it is not in contact with the nest, she remains imprisoned and will let herself die without perforating the bag.
“Here, then, are sturdy insects for whom boring tufa is mere child’s play, which will stupidly let themselves perish imprisoned by a paper bag,”[10] to which it does not even occur to bite a second time through the frail envelope through which they have already bitten once when it was, so to speak, part of the earthen enclosure.
The Wasp, which is such a marvellous architect, and so skilful a digger, is no better able to employ her talents. During the night we place a bell-glass over a Wasp’s nest. In the morning the Wasps issue forth and struggle against the glass wall, but not one of them dreams of digging at the foot of the treacherous circle. But one Wasp, of several which have strayed from the community, coming from outside, opens up a way [[341]]to the nest under the edge of the bell-glass, which is a natural enough proceeding for an insect returning from the fields, who may have to gain her nest through falls of earth in the entry. But even this particular Wasp cannot repeat the operation in order to emerge from the bell-glass, and the whole community eventually die prisoners after a week of futile agitation. The entomologist finds this ineptness of the Wasp repeated in the Necrophori, who nevertheless have a great reputation for intelligence, and, in general, in all the insects which he has had occasion to rear under a bell-glass.
The larva is subject to the same absurdities as the adult insect. The Scolia’s larva, which eats in such a scientific manner, is quite unable to apply its remarkable talents the moment it is off the beaten track. Placed on the victim’s back at a spot which is not the normal point of attack, placed on a Cetonia-grub that is immobilised without being paralysed, or merely removed for a moment from its position, it is no longer able to do anything right.
By a strange contradiction, characteristic of the instinctive faculties, profound knowledge is associated with an ignorance no less profound.… [[342]]For instinct nothing is difficult, so long as the action does not diverge from the immutable cycle laid down for the insect; for instinct, again, nothing is easy if the action has to diverge from the paths habitually followed. The instinct which amazes us, which terrifies us by its supreme lucidity, astonishes us by its stupidity a moment later, when confronted with the simplest situation which is alien to its ordinary practice.… Instinct knows everything in the invariable tracks which have been laid down for it; nothing when off this track.
Sublime inspirations of science and amazing inconsequences of stupidity are both its heritage, accordingly as it is acting under normal or accidental conditions.[11]
It would be interesting to pursue this inquiry into the general laws of instinct, and to give, as a pendant to the antithesis of its wisdom and stupidity, the no less singular antithesis of its automatism and its variations. But that we may not beyond all measure enlarge the proportions of this monograph we will pass on at once to the determination of the causes of instinct, as related by our naturalist philosopher. [[343]]
The laudator temporis acti is untimely, for the world progresses. Yes, but backwards at times. In my young days, in the twopenny classics, we were taught that man is a reasoning animal; to-day, in learned volumes, it is demonstrated that human reason is only a higher degree upon a scale whose base descends into the depths of animality. There is the more and the less, and all the intermediate degrees, but nowhere a sudden solution of continuity. It begins at zero in the albumen of a cell, and rises to the mighty brain of a Newton. The noble faculty of which we were so proud is a zoological attribute.
This is an assertion of grave significance.… Assuredly we have need of ingenuousness in entomology. Without a good dose of this quality, sheer wrongheadedness in the eyes of practical folk, who could trouble himself about insects? Yes, let us be naïve, without being childishly credulous. Before making the animal reason, let us reason a little ourselves. Above all, let us consult the experimental test. Facts gathered at random, without a critical selection, cannot constitute a law.[12]
And the prudent naturalist sifts all the anecdotes and records of habits, all the rational or sentimental achievements which the [[344]]writers of books and the “glorifiers of the animal” pass from hand to hand, showing clearly that all the facts alleged in proof of the intelligence of animals are ill-observed or wrongly interpreted.
Having shown in its true light one of these fabricated facts related by Clairville, he cries: