by the marvelous perspective of the years.

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