This, we are assured, is how the insect would reason if suddenly surprised. The trick has long been famous. Once upon a time, two friends, at the end of their resources, sold the skin of a Bear before they had killed the brute. The encounter was unfortunate: they had to take to their heels. One of them stumbled, fell, held his breath and shammed dead. The Bear came up, turned the man over and over, explored him with his paw and his muzzle, sniffed at his face: "He smells already," he said and, without more ado, turned away. That Bear was a simpleton. The bird would not be duped by this clumsy stratagem. In those happy days when the discovery of a nest marked a red-letter day, I never saw my Sparrows or Greenfinches refuse a Locust because he was not moving, or a Fly because she was dead. Any mouthful that does not kick is eagerly accepted, provided that it be fresh and pleasant to the taste. If the insect, therefore, relies on the appearance of death, it would seem to me to be very badly inspired. More wary than the Bear in the fable, the bird, with its perspicacious eye, will recognize the fraud in a moment and proceed to business. Besides, had the object really been a corpse, but still fresh, it would none the less have gobbled it up. More insistent doubts occur to my mind when I consider the serious consequences to which the insect's artfulness might lead. It shams dead, says the popular idiom, which recks little of weighing the value of its term; it simulates death, scientific language repeats, happy to find some gleams of reason in the insect. What truth is there in this unanimous statement, which in the one case is too unreflecting and in the other too much inclined to favour theoretical fancies? Logical arguments are insufficient here. It is essential that we should obtain the verdict of experiment, which alone can furnish a valid reply. But to which of the insects shall we go first? I remember something that dates back some forty years. Delighted with a recent University triumph, I was staying at Cette, on my return from Toulouse, where I had just passed my examination as a licentiate in natural science. It gave me a fine chance of renewing my acquaintance with the seaside flora, which had delighted me a few years before on the shores of the wonderful Gulf of Ajaccio. It would have been foolish to neglect it. A degree does not confer the right to cease studying. If one really has a touch of the sacred fire in one's veins, one remains a student all one's life, not of books, which are a poor resource, but of the great, inexhaustible school of actual things.