INNER‘LIFE OF THE INSECT. 
151 
head, took it between its two hands, as if it would fain have shaken it 
clear of the fatal intoxication which rendered it so little able to provide 
for its own safety. One would have said it was questioning itself, 
collecting its thoughts, and saying, as we do after a bad dream, “ Is it 
true, or is it false ?—Poor head !—Alas ! what ails thee, then ? ” 
At that moment I felt that we were living in two worlds, and that 
there were no means of understanding each other. How could I re¬ 
assure it ? My language, that of the voice; its, that of the antennae. 
Not one of my words could obtain access to the electric telegraph 
which served as its organ of hearing. 
The continuous bony case which envelops its body isolates the 
insect from us, and conceals us from the insect. It has a heart which 
beats like ours; but we cannot see its pulsations beneath its thick coat 
of mail. It does not even command that wordless lano’uao*e which 
O O 
touches us in so many dumb beings. It is wholly wrapped up in 
mystery and silence. 
It breathes, or rather imbibes air, through the sides, not through the 
face or head. No palpitation or respiratory movement can be detected 
in it. Therefore, how should it speak, how complain ? Of all our lan¬ 
guages it has not one; it makes a sound, but does not possess a voice. 
Is the fixed and immovable mask, thus condemned to perpetual 
silence, that of a monster or a spectre ? No. After watching its move¬ 
ments, its numerous actions indicative of reflection, its arts so much 
more advanced than those of the larger animals, we are not unwilling 
to believe that in this head exists a personality. And from the highest 
to the lowest in the scale of life, we recognize an identity of organization. 
