e one another, but with an interval between, so
that the tertiary larva can move and turn as it wishes in its multiple
enclosure. In the Zonites, there is the same arrangement, with this
difference, that, until the nymph appears, there is no empty space
between one slough and the next. The tertiary larva cannot budge. It
is not free, as witness its cast skin, which fits so precisely to the
envelope of the pseudochrysalis. This form would therefore pass
unperceived if its existence were not proclaimed by the membrane which
lines the inside of the pseudochrysalid pouch.

To complete the story of the Zonites, the primary larva is lacking. I
do not yet know it, for, when rearing the insect under wire-gauze
covers, I never succeeded in obtaining a batch of eggs.

CHAPTER VII
THE CAPRICORN

My youthful meditations owe some happy moments to Condillac's[1]
famous statue which, when endowed with the sense of smell, inhales the
scent of a rose and out of that single impression creates a whole
world of ideas. My twenty-year-old mind, full of faith in syllogisms,
loved to follow the deductive jugglery of the abbe-philosopher: I saw,
or seemed to see, the statue take life in that action of the nostrils,
acquiring attention, memory, judgment and all the psychological
paraphernalia, even as still waters are aroused and rippled by the
impact of a grain of sand. I recovered from my illusion under the
instruction of my abler master, the animal. The Capricorn shall teach
us that the problem is more obscure than the abbe led me to believe.

[Footnote 1: Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Abbe de Mureaux (1715-1780),
the leading exponent of sensational philosophy. His most important
work is the _Traite des sensations_, in which he imagines a statue,
organized like a man, and endows it with the senses one by one,
beginning with that of smell. He argues by a process of imaginative
reconstruction that all human faculties and all human knowledge are
merely transformed sensation, to the exclusion of any other principle,
that, in short, everything has its source in sensation: man is nothing
but what he has acquired.--_Translator's Note_.]

When wedge and mallet are at work, preparing my provision of firewood
under the grey sky that heralds winter, a favourite relaxation creates
a welcome break in my daily output of prose. By my express orders, the
woodman has selected the oldest and most ravaged trunks in his stack.
My tastes bring a smil