It would be easy for me, if my argument were not already quite clear, to give a host of similar examples showing plainly that the intelligence of the insect is absolutely deficient in rational discernment, even when the great perfection of the work would seem to allow the artisan a certain perspicacity. We will confine ourselves for the moment to the three cases which I have mentioned. The Pelopæus goes on storing Spiders for an egg that has been removed; she perseveres in making hunting-trips that are henceforth useless; she hoards victuals that are destined to nourish nothing; she multiplies her battues to fill with game a larder which is forthwith emptied by my tweezers; lastly, she closes, with every customary care, a cell that no longer contains anything whatever: she sets her seal on emptiness. She does even absurder things: she plasters the site of her vanished nest, covering an imaginary structure and putting a roof to a house which at the moment is tucked away in my pocket. In the case of the Great Peacock, the caterpillar, despite the certain loss of the coming Moth, instead of beginning all over again the mouth of the Eel-pot cut down by my scissors, quietly continues its spinning, without in any way modifying the regular course of the work; and, when the time comes for making the last tiers of defensive filaments, it erects them upon the dangerous breach, but neglects to rebuild the ruined portion of the barricade. Indifferent to the indispensable, it occupies itself with the superfluous. What are we to conclude from these facts? I would fain believe, for the sake of my insects’ reputation, in some distraction on their part, in some individual giddiness which would not taint the general perspicacity; I should like to regard their aberrations merely as isolated and exceptional actions, which would not affect their judgment as a whole. Alas, a long series of glaring facts would impose silence on my attempts at rehabilitation! Any species, no matter which, when subjected to experimental tests, is guilty of similar inconsistencies in the course of its disturbed industry. Constrained by the inexorable logic of the facts, I therefore state the deductions suggested by observation as follows: the insect is neither free nor conscious in its industry, which in its case is an external function with phases regulated almost as strictly as the phases of an internal function, such as digestion. It builds, weaves, hunts, stabs and paralyses, even as it digests, even as it secretes the poison of its sting, the silk of its cocoon or the wax of its combs, always without the least understanding of the means or the end. It is ignorant of its wonderful talents just as the stomach is ignorant of its skilful chemistry. It can add nothing essential to them nor subtract anything from them, any more than it is able to increase or diminish the pulsations of its dorsal vessel.