But, where the Gad-fly has got off, the Midge remains. The winged Aphis also remains, the Ant, the Mosquito and many another of the smaller insects. What does the plant do with its captures? Of what use are these trophies of corpses hanging by a leg or a wing? Does the vegetable bird-limer, with its sticky rings, derive advantage from these death-struggles? A Darwinian, remembering the carnivorous plants, would say yes. As for me, I don't believe a word of it. The Oporto silene is ringed with bands of gum. Why? I don't know. Insects are caught in these snares. Of what use are they to the plant? Why, none at all; and that's all about it. I leave to others, bolder than myself, the fantastic idea of taking these annular exudations for a digestive fluid which will reduce the captured Midges to soup and make them serve to feed the Silene. Only I warn them that the insects sticking to the plant do not dissolve into broth, but shrivel, quite uselessly, in the sun. Let us return to the Tachytes, who is also a victim of the vegetable snare. With a sudden flight, a huntress arrives, carrying her drooping prey. She grazes the Silene's lime-twigs too closely. Behold the Mantis caught by the abdomen. For twenty minutes at least the Wasp, still on the wing, tugs at her, tugging again and again, to overcome the cause of the hitch and release the spoil. The hauling-method, a continuation of the flight, comes to nothing; and no other is attempted. At last the insect wearies and leaves the Mantis hanging to the Silene. Now or never was the moment for the intervention of that tiny glimmer of reason which Darwin so generously grants to animals. Do not, if you please, confound reason with intelligence, as people are too prone to do. I deny the one; and the other is incontestable, within very modest limits. It was, I said, the moment to reason a little, to discover the cause of the hitch and to attack the difficulty at its source. For the Tachytes the matter was of the simplest. She had but to grab the body by the skin of the abdomen immediately above the spot caught by the glue and to pull it towards her, instead of persevering in her flight without releasing the neck. Simple though this mechanical problem was, the insect was unable to solve it, because she was not able to trace the effect back to the cause, because she did not even suspect that the stoppage had a cause.