ich it has lately travelled. The
Processionary Caterpillars, when they leave their nest and go to another
branch, on another tree, in search of a type of leaf more to their
taste, carpet the course with silk and are able to return home by
following the threads stretched along their road. This is the most
elementary method open to the insect liable to stray on its excursions:
a silken path brings it home again. The Processionaries, with their
unsophisticated traffic-laws, are very different from the Mason-bees and
others, who have a special sense to guide them.

The Amazon, though belonging to the Hymenopteron clan, herself possesses
rather limited homing-faculties, as witness her compulsory return by her
former trail. Can she imitate, to a certain extent, the Processionaries'
method, that is to say, does she leave, along the road traversed, not a
series of conducting threads, for she is not equipped for that work,
but some odorous emanation, for instance some formic scent, which would
allow her to guide herself by means of the olfactory sense? This view is
pretty generally accepted. The Ants, people say, are guided by the
sense of smell; and this sense of smell appears to have its seat in the
antennae, which we see in continual palpitation. It is doubtless very
reprehensible, but I must admit that the theory does not inspire me with
overwhelming enthusiasm. In the first place, I have my suspicions about
a sense of smell seated in the antennae: I have given my reasons before;
and, next, I hope to prove by experiment that the Red Ants are not
guided by a scent of any kind.

To lie in wait for my Amazons, for whole afternoons on end, often
unsuccessfully, meant taking up too much of my time. I engaged an
assistant whose hours were not so much occupied as mine. It was my
grand-daughter Lucie, a little rogue who liked to hear my stories of
the Ants. She had been present at the great battle between the reds and
blacks and was much impressed by the rape of the long-clothes babies.
Well-coached in her exalted functions, very proud of already serving
that august lady, Science, my little Lucie would wander about the
garden, when the weather seemed propitious, and keep an eye on the Red
Ants, having been commissioned to reconnoitre carefully the road to the
pillaged Ant-hill. She had given proof of her zeal; I could rely upon
it.

One day, while I was spinning out my daily quota of prose, there came a
banging at my study-door: