Bramble-bees and Others 



ble yourself in the presence of the reality and 

 confess your ignorance, rather than attempt 

 to hide your embarrassment under vain ex- 

 planations ! 



"If the first egg laid by the busy mother 

 were destined to be the first-born of the Ody- 

 neri, that one, in order to see the light imme- 

 diately after achieving wings, would have had 

 the option either of breaking through the 

 double walls of his prison or of perforating, 

 from bottom to top, the seven shells ahead of 

 him, in order to emerge through the truncate 

 end of the bramble-stem. Now nature, while 

 refusing any way of escape laterally, was also 

 bound to veto any direct invasion, the brutal 

 gimlet-work which would inevitably have 

 sacrificed seven members of one family for the 

 safety of an only son. Nature is as ingenious 

 in design as she is fertile in resource and she 

 must have foreseen and forestalled every diffi- 

 culty. She decided that the last-built cradle 

 should yield the first-born child; that this one 

 should clear the road for his next oldest 

 brother, the second brother for the third and 

 so on. And this is the order in which the 

 birth of our Odyneri of the Brambles actually 

 takes place." 



»3 



