PROVISION FOR REARING THE YOUNG. 127 



again until it had ranged four crickets side by side. 

 Before attempting a decisive experiment, the observer 

 felt his way. At the moment when the Sphex was 

 buried in the earth examining the chamber, Fabre 

 withdrew the prey a short distance and awaited events. 

 Having made the domiciliary visit, the Sphex then 

 went straight to the place where it had left its insect, 

 but could not find it. It was naturally very perplexed, 

 and examined the neighbourhood with extreme agita- 

 tion, not knowing what had happened, and evidently 

 regarding the whole affair as very extraordinary; at 

 last it found the victim it was seeking. The cricket 

 still preserved the same immobility; its executioner 

 seized it by an antenna and drew it anew to the 

 entrance of the hole. In the interior of the subterra- 

 nean domain everything is in good order ; the insect 

 had just assured itself of the fact, and we should 

 expect to see it enter with its prey; not at all, it 

 entered alone, and only decided to introduce the prey 

 after it had made a fresh inspection. This fact is 

 surprising, and it is still more surprising that if the 

 practical joke of removing the cricket is repeated 

 several times in succession, the Sphex drags it anew 

 every time to the entrance of the burrow and first 

 descends alone ; forty times over this experiment 

 succeeded without the insect deciding to renounce the 

 habitual manoeuvre. Fabre insists on this fact, and 

 rightly, for nothing should be neglected ; he makes it 

 a text to show how automatic instinct is, and how the 

 acts which proceed from it are invariably regulated so 

 as to succeed one another always in the same order. 

 In their nature these acts are quite indistinguishable 

 from intelligent acts ; only the creature is not capable 

 of modifying them to bring them into harmony with 



