The Black Swans 



drawings, the whole wonderful scheme 

 disclosed. And all the while they 

 might have been very much more un- 

 profitably employed. They might, for 

 instance, have been selling to a gullible 

 public mining stocks, or oil-lands on 

 the slopes of Popocatepetl, or coffee 

 plantations where the cocoanuts and 

 paroquets and monkeys grow. They 

 tell us many marvelous tales about the 

 bee and ant and spider that many 

 generations of men have accepted with- 

 out question. There is no one to dis- 

 pute their statements set forth as they 

 are with such great wealth of detail. 

 Fabres do not live in every generation. 

 It is not therefore for any mere lay- 

 man or woman to question seriously, 

 even for a moment, researches made 

 with a patience that can only evoke 

 our profoundest admiration. So when 

 they tell us that the male does all the 

 talking in bugdom, I suppose there 

 is nothing to do but to accept the 

 statement. True, if we mere humans 

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