FABRE'S BOOK OF INSECTS 



with special tools'? No, the Cricket is not an expert 

 in the art of digging; in fact, one is rather surprised at 

 the result when one considers the feebleness of his means. 



Is a home a necessity to him, on account of an excep- 

 tionally delicate skin? No, his near kinsmen have skins 

 as sensitive as his, yet do not dread the open air at all. 



Is the house-building talent the result of his anatomy? 

 Has he any special organ that suggests it? No: in my 

 neighbourhood there are three other Crickets who are so 

 much like the Field Cricket in appearance, colour, and 

 structure, that at the first glance one would take them 

 for him. Of these faithful copies, not one knows how 

 to dig himself a burrow. The Double-spotted Cricket 

 inhabits the heaps of grass that are left to rot in damp 

 places; the Solitary Cricket roams about the dry clods 

 turned up by the gardener's spade; the Bordeaux Cricket 

 is not afraid to make his way into our houses, where he 

 sings discreetly, during August and September, in some 

 cool, dark spot. 



There is no object in continuing these questions : the 

 answer would always be No. Instinct never tells us its 

 causes. It depends so little on an insect's stock of tools 

 that no detail of anatomy, nothing in the creature's 

 formation, can explain it to us or make us foresee it. 

 These four similar Crickets, of whom only one can 



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