THE NATURAL 



not a cause. Insects' eyes are very different from ours. 

 One has spoken of the experiments of a German savant 

 who wished to throw visual images on the brain without 

 the eye's intervention. This is suspicious, but not ab- 

 surd: insects are gifted certainly with the power to smell, 

 but one has never been able to discover the organ in 

 any single one of them; and, also, the role of the anten- 

 nae which seems very considerable in their life, remains 

 very obscure, since the removal of these appendices has 

 not always a measurable effect on their activity. 1 



Organs, evidently the most useful, are sometimes placed 

 in a position which diminishes their value. Notice a 

 resting horse, and another horse coming toward him (ob- 

 servation can be made quite easily in the streets of 

 Paris), what is he to do to gauge the danger, and re- 

 connoitre the movement? Look at the other horse? No. 

 His eyes are made to look sideways, not forward. He 

 uses his long ears, raises them, shifts their open side to- 

 ward the noise. Reassured he lets them fall, and re- 

 establishes his calm. The horse looks with his ears. 

 The blinkers by which people pretend to make him look 

 forward, merely blind him, and perhaps, thereby diminish 

 his impressionability. Blind horses moreover do the same 

 work as the others. 



The senses, as one knows, are substitutable one for 

 the other, in a certain degree; but in the normal state 

 they seem rather to reinforce each other mutually, and 

 lend each other a certain support. One does not shut the 

 eyes to hear better, save when one has determined the 



1 Fabre's experiments on mason bees, the shaggy ammophile, 

 and great-peacock moth. 



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