The Psyches: the Cases 



of the straws; and the spinner takes no 

 notice. 



The house is worse than ruined: it no 

 longer exists. No matter : the caterpillar con- 

 tinues his actual work; he loses sight of the 

 real and upholsters the imaginary. 1 And yet 

 everything ought to apprise him of the ab- 

 sence of any roofing. The sack with which 

 he has managed to cover himself, very skil- 

 fully for that matter, is lamentably flabby. 

 It sags and rumples at every movement of 

 the insect's body. Moverover, it is made 

 heavy with sand and bristles with spikes in 

 every direction, which catch in the dust of the 

 road and make all progress impossible. Thus 

 anchored to the ground, the caterpillar wastes 

 his strength in efforts to shift his position. 

 It takes him hours to make a start and to 

 move his cumbrous dwelling a fraction of an 

 inch. 



With his normal case, in which all the 

 beams are imbricated from front to back with 

 scientific precision, he gets along very nimbly. 



1 For other instances of what Fabre calls "the insect's 

 mental incapacity in the presence of the accidental" I 

 would refer the reader to one essay inter alia, entitled, 

 Some Reflections upon Insect Psychology, which forms 

 chap. vii. of The Mason-bees. Translator's Note. 



243 



