volatilizes, on contact with the air, with a slight report.--
_Translator's Note_.]

Distillers of corrosives, gunners throwing lyddite, bombers employing
dynamite: what can all these violent creatures, so well equipped for
battle, do beyond committing slaughter? Nothing. We find no art, no
industry, not even in the larva, which practices the adult's trade and
meditates its crimes while wandering under the stones. Nevertheless it
is to one of these dull-witted warriors that I am deliberately
proposing to apply to-day, prompted by the wish to solve a certain
question. Let me tell you what it is.

You have surprised this or that insect, motionless on a bough,
blissfully basking in the sun. Your hand is raised, open, ready to
descend on it and seize it. Hardly have you made the movement when the
insect drops to the ground. It is a wearer of armoured wing-cases,
slow to disengage the wings from their horny sheath, or perhaps an
incomplete form, with no wing-surfaces. Incapable of sudden flight,
the surprised insect lets itself fall. You look for it in the grass,
often in vain. If you do find it, it is lying on its back, with its
legs folded, without stirring.

It is shamming dead, people will tell you; it is pretending, in order
to escape its enemy. Man is certainly unknown to it; we count for
nothing in its little world. What does it care for our hunting,
whether we be children or scientists? It does not fear the collector
with his long pin; but it realizes danger in general; and it dreads
its natural enemy, the insectivorous bird, which swallows it with a
single snap. To outwit the assailant, it lies upon its back, draws up
its legs and simulates death. The bird, or any other persecutor, will
despise it in this condition; and its life will be saved.

This, we are assured, is how the insect would reason if suddenly
surprised. The trick has long been famous. Once upon a time, two
friends, at the end of their resources, sold the skin of a Bear before
they had killed the brute. The encounter was unfortunate: they had to
take to their heels. One of them stumbled, fell, held his breath and
shammed dead. The Bear came up, turned the man over and over, explored
him with his paw and his muzzle, sniffed at his face:

"He smells already," he said and, without more ado, turned away.

That Bear was a simpleton.

The bird would not be duped by this clumsy stratagem. In those happy
days when the discovery of a nest marked a red