hey were not
fertilized.

And why were they not fertilized? Because the seminal receptacle, so
tiny, so difficult to see that it sometimes escaped me despite all
my scrutiny, had exhausted its contents. The mothers in whom this
receptacle retained a remnant of sperm to the end had their last eggs as
fertile as the first; the others, whose seminal reservoir was exhausted
too soon, had their last-born stricken with death. All this seems to me
as clear as daylight.

If the unfertilized eggs perish without hatching, those which hatch and
produce males are therefore fertilized; and the German theory falls to
the ground.

Then what explanation shall I give of the wonderful facts which I have
set forth? Why, none, absolutely none. I do not explain facts, I relate
them. Growing daily more sceptical of the interpretations suggested to
me and more hesitating as to those which I may have to suggest myself,
the more I observe and experiment, the more clearly I see rising out of
the black mists of possibility an enormous note of interrogation.

Dear insects, my study of you has sustained me and continues to sustain
me in my heaviest trials. I must take leave of you for to-day. The ranks
are thinning around me and the long hopes have fled. Shall I be able to
speak to you again? (This is the closing paragraph of Volume 3 of the
"Souvenirs entomologiques," of which the author has lived to publish
seven more volumes, containing over 2,500 pages and nearly 850,000
words.--Translator's Note.)

CHAPTER 6. INSTINCT AND DISCERNMENT.

The Pelopaeus (A Mason-wasp forming the subject of essays which have not
yet been published in English.--Translator's Note.) gives us a very poor
idea of her intellect when she plasters up the spot in the wall where
the nest which I have removed used to stand, when she persists in
cramming her cell with Spiders for the benefit of an egg no longer there
and when she dutifully closes a cell which my forceps has left
empty, extracting alike germ and provisions. The Mason-bees (Cf. "The
Mason-bees": chapter 7.--Translator's Note.), the caterpillar of the
Great Peacock Moth (Cf. "Social Life in the Insect World" by J.H. Fabre,
translated by Bernard Miall: chapter 14.--Translator's Note.) and
many others, when subjected to similar tests, are guilty of the same
illogical behaviour: they continue, in the normal order, their series
of industrious actions, though an accident has now rendered them all
useless