ball was completely detached. Had he some vague consciousness of the service performed by the gradual raising of the pedestal? I venture to doubt it, though he cleverly took advantage of my platform of little stones. As a matter of fact, if the very elementary idea of using a higher support in order to reach something placed above one’s grasp were not beyond the Beetle’s comprehension, how is it that, when there are two of them, neither thinks of lending the other his back so as to raise him by that much and make it possible for him to go on working? If one helped the other in this way, they could reach twice as high. They are very far, however, from any such cooperation. Each pushes the ball, with all his might, I admit, but he pushes as if he were alone and seems to have no notion of the happy result that would follow a combined effort. In this instance, when the ball is nailed to the ground by a pin, they do exactly what they do in corresponding circumstances, as, for example, when the load is brought to a standstill by some obstacle, caught in a loop of couch-grass or transfixed by some spiky bit of stalk that has run into the soft, rolling mass. I produced artificially a stoppage which is not really very different from those occurring naturally when the ball is being rolled amid the thousand and one irregularities of the ground; and the Beetle behaves, in my experimental tests, as he would have behaved in any other circumstances in which I had no part. He uses his back as a wedge and a lever and pushes with his feet, without introducing anything new into his methods, even when he has a companion and can avail himself of his assistance. When he is all alone in face of the difficulty, when he has no assistant, his dynamic operations remain absolutely the same; and his efforts to move his transfixed ball end in success, provided that we give him the indispensable support of a platform, built up little by little. If we deny him this succour, then, no longer encouraged by the contact of his beloved ball, he loses heart and sooner or later flies away, doubtless with many regrets, and disappears. Where to? I do not know. What I do know is that he does not return with a gang of fellow-labourers whom he has begged to help him. What would he do with them, he who cannot make use of even one comrade?