The Ignorance of Instinct 1 83 



understand that she can take a leg instead of an 

 antenna is utterly beyond her powers. She 

 must have the antenna, or some other string 

 attached to the head, such as one of the palpi. 

 If these cords did not exist, her race would 

 perish, for lack of the capacity to solve this 

 trivial problem. 



Experiment II 



The Wasp is engaged in closing her burrow, 

 where the prey has been stored and the egg laid 

 upon it. With her front tarsi she brushes her 

 doorstep, working backwards and sweeping 

 into the entrance a stream of dust which passes 

 under her belly and spurts behind in a parabolic 

 spray as continuous as a liquid spray, so nimble 

 is the sweeper in her actions. From time to 

 time the Sphex picks out with her mandibles 

 a few grains of sand, so many solid blocks 

 which she inserts one by one into the mass of 

 dust, causing it all to cake together by beating 

 and compressing it with her forehead and 

 mandibles. Walled up by this masonry, the 

 entrance-door soon disappears from sight. 



I intervene in the middle of the work. 

 Pushing the Sphex aside, I carefully clear the 

 short gallery with the blade of a knife, take 

 away the materials that close it and restore full 



