eighbour lent his, and, as it was the period of rutting,
they shut the two beasts up in the press, concealing themselves behind
the casks in order that the event might be quietly accomplished.

Each first ate a little heap of hay; then they ruminated; the ewe lay
down, and she bleated continuously, while the he-goat, standing erect on
his crooked legs, with his big beard and his drooping ears, fixed on her
his eyes, which glittered in the shade.

At length, on the evening of the third day, they deemed it advisable to
assist nature, but the goat, turning round on Pecuchet, hit him in the
lower part of the stomach with his horns. The ewe, seized with fear,
began turning about in the press as if in a riding-school. Bouvard ran
after her, threw himself on top of her to hold her, and fell on the
ground with both hands full of wool.

They renewed their experiments on hens and a drake, on a mastiff and a
sow, in the hope that monsters might be the result, not understanding
anything about the question of species.

This word denotes a group of individuals whose descendants reproduce
themselves, but animals classed as of different species may possess the
power of reproduction, while others comprised in the same species have
lost the capacity. They flattered themselves that they would obtain
clear ideas on this subject by studying the development of germs; and
Pecuchet wrote to Dumouchel in order to get a microscope.

By turns they put on the glass surface hairs, tobacco, finger-nails, and
a fly's claw, but they forgot the drop of water which is indispensable;
at other times it was the little lamel, and they pushed each other
forward, and put the instrument out of order; then, when they saw only a
haze, they blamed the optician. They went so far as to have doubts about
the microscope. Perhaps the discoveries that have been attributed to it
are not so certain?

Dumouchel, in sending on the invoice to them, begged of them to collect
on his account some serpent-stones and sea-urchins, of which he had
always been an admirer, and which were commonly found in country
districts. In order to interest them in geology he sent them the
_Lettres_ of Bertrand with the _Discours_ of Cuvier on the revolutions
of the globe.

After the perusal of these two works they imagined the following state
of things:

First, an immense sheet of water, from which emerged promontories
speckled with lichens, and not one human being, not one sound. It w