shell. We should dislike to see any such exhibition of
tenderness among human beings, but we can't help admiring the
scorpion.

Mr. Scorpion, placed as was Captain Dreyfus, would sting himself
to death. They are a determined race. ----

Spiders who construct tiny balloons with little cars all complete
are wonderful creatures. They cross chasms in their balloons,
throwing out bits of trailing web which seem to act as rudders.
In their little way and in a perfectly adequate fashion they have
solved aerial navigation, which still puzzles us. We admire
spiders and kill only those with yellow stomachs, which are
"poison." ----

But up to the present we have found the ant the most
interestingly suggestive creature. He has developed and
understands stirpiculture--the improvement of the race by careful
breeding--which with us is as yet mere theory, and as we look
down at the ant, we look up to him because the strangely active
creature manages to do without sleep.

We human beings drowse through thirty years of our threescore and
ten, but the ant is awake and working all the time.

If the ant has managed to live without sleep, if he has acquired
the faculty of lifelong wakefulness, why should we not do as much
in time? We take it for granted that sleep is essential, as we
take everything else for granted. We used to take it for granted
that the earth was flat, but we have stopped that. Sleep was at