The Life of the Grasshopper 



his size. The third is smaller still. Well, of 

 these faithful copies, these doubles of the 

 Field Cricket, not one knows how to dig him- 

 self a burrow. The Double-spotted Cricket 

 inhabits those heaps of grass left to 

 rot in damp places; the Solitary Cricket 

 roams about the crevices in the dry clods 

 turned up by the gardener's spade ; the Bor- 

 deaux Cricket is not afraid to make his way 

 into our houses, where he sings discreetly, 

 during August and September, in some dark, 

 cool spot. 



There is no object in continuing our quest- 

 ions : each would meet with no for an an- 

 swer. Instinct, which stands revealed here 

 and disappears there despite organisms alike 

 in all respects, will never tell us its causes. 

 It depends so little on an insect's stock of 

 tools that no anatomical detail can explain 

 it to us and still less make us foresee it. 

 The four almost identical Crickets, of whom 

 one alone understands the art of burrowing, 

 add their evidence to the manifold proofs 

 already supplied; they confirm in a striking 

 fashion our profound ignorance of the origin 

 of instinct. 



Who does not know the Cricket's 

 abode ! Who has not, as a child playing in 



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