Nor would any of them suit my plans of today. Their world is too vast. I should lose myself in their immensities, where life swarms freely in the sun. Like the ocean, they are infinite in their fruitfulness. And then any assiduous watching, undisturbed by passers by, is an impossibility on the public way. What I want is a pond on an extremely reduced scale, sparingly stocked in my own fashion an artificial pond standing permanently on my study table. A louis has been overlooked in a corner of the drawer. I can spend it without seriously jeopardizing the domestic balance. Let me make this gift to science, who, I fear, will be none too much obliged to me. A gorgeous equipment may be all very well for laboratories wherein the cells and fibers of the dead are consulted at great expense; but such magnificence is of doubtful utility when we have to study the actions of the living. It is the humble makeshift, of no value, that stumbles on the secrets of life. What did the best results of my studies of instinct cost me? Nothing but time and, above all, patience. My extravagant expenditure of twenty francs, therefore, will be a risky speculation if devoted to the purchase of an apparatus of study. It will bring me in nothing in the way of fresh views, of that I am convinced. However, let us try. The blacksmith makes me the framework of a cage out of a few iron rods. The joiner, who is also a glazier on occasion--for, in my village, you have to be a Jack-of-all-trades if you would make both ends meet--sets the framework on a wooden base and supplies it with a movable board as a lid; he fixes thick panes of glass in the four sides. Behold the apparatus, complete, with a bottom of tarred sheet iron and a trap to let the water out. The makers express themselves satisfied with their work, a singular novelty in their respective shops, where many an inquisitive caller has wondered what use I intend to make of my little glass trough. The thing creates a certain stir. Some insist that it is meant to hold my supplies of oil and to take the place of the receptacle in general use in our parts, the urn dug out of a block of stone. What would those utilitarians have thought of my crazy mind, had they known that my costly gear would merely serve to let me watch some wretched animals kicking about in the water! Smith and glazier are content with their work. I myself am pleased. For all its rustic air, the apparatus does not lack elegance. It looks very well, standing on a little table in front of a window visited by the sun for the greater part of the day. Its holding capacity is some ten or eleven gallons. What shall we call it? An aquarium? No, that would be too pretentious and would, very unjustly, suggest the aquatic toy filled with rock work, waterfalls and goldfish beloved of the dwellers in suburbia. Let us preserve the gravity of serious things and not treat my learned trough as though it were a drawing room futility. We will call it the glass pond.