The Return to the Nest 



that is to say, for home. Five hours later, I 

 return to the common site of the nests. I am 

 hardly there when I see two of my Cerceres 

 with white dots working at the burrows; 

 soon a third arrives from the fields, with a 

 Weevil between her legs; a fourth is not slow 

 in following. The recognition of four out 

 of twelve in less than fifteen minutes was 

 enough to convince me. I thought it unne- 

 cessary to wait any longer. What four could 

 do the others would do, if they had not al- 

 ready done it; and I was quite at liberty to 

 presume that the absent eight were out hunt- 

 ing or else hidden in their underground gal- 

 leries. Therefore, carried for a mile and a 

 half in a direction and by a road of which 

 they could not have taken cognizance in their 

 paper prisons, the Cerceres, or at least some 

 of them, had returned home. 



I do not know how far the Cerceres' hunt- 

 ing-grounds extend; and it is possible that 

 they know the country more or less over a 

 radius of a mile and a half. In that case, 

 they would not have felt sufficiently lost at 

 the spot to which I moved them and they 

 would have got home by their acquired local 

 knowledge. The experiment had to be re- 

 peated, at a greater distance and from a 

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