CHAPTER XVII 



THE RETURN TO THE NEST 



^ I ''HE Ammophila sinking her well at a 

 •*■ late hour of the day leaves her work, 

 after closing the orifice with a stone lid, flits 

 away from flower to flower, goes to another 

 part of the country and yet next day is able 

 to come back with her caterpillar to the home 

 excavated on the day before, notwithstand- 

 ing the unfamiliar locality, which is often 

 quite new to her. The Bembex, laden with 

 game, alights with almost mathematical pre- 

 cision on the threshold of her door, which is 

 blocked with sand and indistinguishable from 

 the rest of the sandy expanse. Where my 

 sight and recollection are at fault, their eyes 

 and their memory possess a sureness that is 

 very nearly infallible. One would think that 

 insects had something more subtle than mere 

 remembrance, a kind of intuition for places 

 to which we have nothing similar, in short, 

 an indefinable faculty which I call memory, 

 failing any other expression to denote it. 

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