7 Suites à Buffon. Introduction a l'entomologie, vol. ii., pp. 460-61.—Author's Note.
To grant, in the intellect of the insect, a lucid understanding of the relations between cause and effect, between the end and the means, is to make a statement of serious import. I know of scarcely any more suited to the philosophical brutalities of my time. But are these two anecdotes really true? Do they involve the consequences deduced from them? Are not those who accept them as sound evidence just a little too simple?
To be sure, simplicity is needed in entomology. Without a good dose of this quality, a mental defect in the eyes of practical folk, who would busy himself with the lesser creatures? Yes, let us be simple, without being childishly credulous. Before making insects reason, let us reason a little ourselves; let us, above all, consult the experimental test. A fact gathered at random, without criticism, cannot establish a law.
I do not propose, O valiant grave-diggers, to depreciate your merits; such is far from being my intention. I have that in my notes, on the other hand, which will do you more honour than the story of the gibbet and the Frog; I have gleaned, for your benefit, examples of prowess which will shed a new lustre upon your reputation.
No, my intention is not to belittle your renown. Besides, it is not the business of impartial history to maintain a given thesis; it follows facts. I wish simply to question you upon the power of logic attributed to you. Do you or do you not enjoy gleams of reason? Have you within you the humble germ of human thought? That is the problem before us.
To solve it we will not rely upon the accidents which good fortune may now and again procure for us. We must employ the breeding-cage, which will permit of assiduous visits, continuous enquiry and a variety of artifices. But how to stock the cage? The land of the olive-tree is not rich in Necrophori. To my knowledge it possesses only a single species, N. vestigator, HERSCH.; and even this rival of the grave-diggers of the north is pretty scarce. The discovery of three or four in the spring was as much as my hunting-expeditions yielded in the old days. This time, if I do not resort to the ruses of the trapper, I shall obtain no more than that, whereas I stand in need of at least a dozen.
These ruses are very simple. To go in search of the sexton, who exists only here and there in the country-side, would be nearly always a waste of time; the favourable month, April, would be past before my cage was suitably stocked. To run after him is to trust too much to accident; so we will make him come to us by scattering in the orchard an abundant collection of dead Moles. To this carrion, ripened by the sun, the insect will not fail to hasten from the various points of the horizon, so accomplished is he in detecting such a delicacy.
I make an arrangement with a gardener in the neighbourhood, who, two or three times a week, makes up for the penury of my two acres of stony ground by providing me with vegetables raised in a better soil. I explain to him my urgent need of Moles in unlimited numbers. Battling daily with trap and spade against the importunate excavator who uproots his crops, he is in a better position than any one to procure for me what I regard for the moment as more precious than his bunches of asparagus or his white-heart cabbages.
The worthy man at first laughs at my request, being greatly surprised by the importance which I attribute to the abhorrent animal, the Darboun; but at last he consents, not without a suspicion at the back of his mind that I am going to make myself a gorgeous winter waist-coat with the soft, velvety skins of the Moles. A thing like that must be good for pains in the back. Very well. We settle the matter. The essential thing is that the Darbouns reach me.
They reach me punctually, by twos, by threes, by fours, packed in a few cabbage-leaves, at the bottom of the gardener's basket. The excellent fellow who lent himself with such good grace to my strange wishes will never guess how much comparative psychology will owe him! In a few days I was the possessor of thirty Moles, which were scattered here and there, as they reached me, in bare spots of the orchard, among the rosemary-bushes, the strawberry-trees and the lavender-beds.