yo The Book of Bugs. 



does beat ail how knowing how a thing is done can take 

 the interest out of anything. And yet we all want to 

 have our fun spoiled for us. The reason why it is spoiled 

 is that, the more miraculous the trick seems to be, the 

 sillier is the device by which it is worked and the angrier 

 we are at ourselves for being taken by it. This, dear 

 friends, applies not only to performing fleas, but to all 

 things whereby the ordinary experiences of men are 

 seemingly set at naught. We are extremely fond of 

 being shown that after all there is no such thing as com- 

 mon sense, but our inquisitive nature prompts us to find 

 out how the demonstration is brought about, and the 

 upshot of it all is that we find out that everything is 

 common sense. 



We naturally know that fleas cannot be educated in the 

 sense of learning Latin and Greek and the higher mathe- 

 matics. We know that the smartest flea that ever was 

 could not go up to the blackboard and work out a simple 

 problem in arithmetic such as, Nine men can mow a 

 meadow so long and so wide in so many days ; how long 

 would it take three men and a boy that did not feel much 

 like working to mow a meadow six miles long and a foot 

 wide ? 



Performers in vaudeville teach warm-blooded animals 

 to do tricks that mimic human actions, and sometimes it 

 is hard to say that the creatures do not really understand 

 some words. But there is a good deal of petting and 

 whipping behind all these doings. How could you pet a 

 flea? And how would you punish a flea without killing 

 it ? While they have sense enough to carry them through 

 most of the vicissitudes of flea life, I don't believe they 

 have much more than that. 



We know as well as we know anything that no insect 

 was ever really tamed or taught as a dog is tamed and 



