he
side-lines, all dressed up in white, practising shots against the
netting.

Finally, the girls will ask him to play with them, and he will thank
them and say that he has to go in the house now as he is all
perspiration and is afraid of catching cold.

After dinner there is dancing on the court by the young people. Anyway,
Daddy is getting pretty old for tennis.

XII

DO INSECTS THINK?

In a recent book entitled, "The Psychic Life of Insects," Professor
Bouvier says that we must be careful not to credit the little winged
fellows with intelligence when they behave in what seems like an
intelligent manner. They may be only reacting. I would like to confront
the Professor with an instance of reasoning power on the part of an
insect which can not be explained away in any such manner.

During the summer of 1899, while I was at work on my treatise "Do Larvae
Laugh," we kept a female wasp at our cottage in the Adirondacks. It
really was more like a child of our own than a wasp, except that it
_looked_ more like a wasp than a child of our own. That was one of the
ways we told the difference.

It was still a young wasp when we got it (thirteen or fourteen years
old) and for some time we could not get it to eat or drink, it was so
shy. Since it was a, female, we decided to call it Miriam, but soon the
children's nickname for it--"Pudge"--became a fixture, and "Pudge" it
was from that time on.

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 cata