The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 Part 8

According to the families, _genera_, and species of insects, the development of different senses varies extremely. We meet with most striking contrasts, and contrasts which have not been sufficiently noticed. Certain insects, dragon-flies, for instance, live almost entirely by means of sight. Others are blind, or almost blind, and subsist exclusively by smell and taste (insects inhabiting caves, most working ants). Hearing is well developed in certain forms (crickets, locusts), but most insects appear not to hear, or to hear with difficulty. Despite their thick, chitinous skeleton, almost all insects have extremely sensitive touch, especially in the antennae, but not confined thereto.

It is absolutely necessary to bear in mind the mental faculties of insects in order to judge with a fair degree of accuracy how they use their senses. We shall return to that point when summing up.

_II.--The Vision of Insects_

In vision we are dealing with a certain definite stimulus--light, with its two modifications, colour and motion. Insects have two sets of organs for vision, the faceted eye and the so-called simple eye, or ocellus. These have been historically derived from one and the same organ. In order to exercise the function of sight the facets need a greater pencil of light rays by night than by day. To obtain the same result we dilate the pupil. But nocturnal insects are dazzled by the light of day, and diurnal insects cannot see by night, for neither possess the faculty of accommodation. Insects are specially able to perceive motion, but there are only very few insects that can see distinctly.

For example, I watched one day a wasp chasing a fly on the wall of a veranda, as is the habit of this insect at the end of summer and in the autumn. She dashed violently in flight at the flies sitting on the wall, which mostly escaped. She continued her pursuit with remarkable pertinacity, and succeeded on several occasions in catching a fly, which she killed, mutilated, and bore away to her nest. Each time she quickly returned to continue the hunt.

In one spot of the wall was stuck a black nail, which was just the size of a fly, and I saw the wasp very frequently deceived by this nail, upon which she sprang, leaving it as soon as she perceived her error on touching it. Nevertheless, she made the same mistake with the nail shortly after. I have often made similar observations. We may certainly conclude that the wasp saw something of the size of a fly, but without distinguishing the details; therefore she saw it indistinctly. Evidently a wasp does not only perceive motion; she also distinguishes the size of objects. When I put dead flies on a table to be carried off by another wasp, she took them, one after another, as well as spiders and other insects of but little different size placed by their side. On the other hand, she took no notice of insects much larger or much smaller put among the flies.

Most entomologists have observed with what ingenuity and sureness dragon-flies distinguish, follow, and catch the smallest insects on the wing. Of all insects, they have the best sight. Their enormous convex eyes have the greatest number of facets. Their number has been estimated at 12,000, and even at 17,000. Their aerial chases resemble those of the swallows. By trying to catch them at the edge of a large pond, one can easily convince oneself that the dragon-flies amuse themselves by making sport of the hunter; they will always allow one to approach just near enough to miss catching them. It can be seen to what degree they are able to measure the distance and reach of their enemy.

It is an absolute fact that dragon-flies, unless it is cold or in the evening, always manage to fly at just that distance at which the student cannot touch them; and they see perfectly well whether one is armed with a net or has nothing but his hands; one might even say that they measure the length of the handle of the net, for the possession of a long handle is no advantage. They fly just out of reach of one's instrument, whatever trouble one may give oneself by hiding it from them and suddenly lunging as they fly off. Whoever watches b.u.t.terflies and flies will soon see that these insects also can measure the distance of such objects as are not far from them. The males and females of bees and ants distinguish one another on the wing. It is rare for an individual to lose sight of the swarm or to miss what it pursues flying. It has been proved that the sense of smell has nothing to do with this matter. Thus insects, though without any power of accommodation for light or distance, are able to perceive objects at different distances.

It is known that many insects will blindly fly and dash against a lamp at night, until they burn themselves. It has often been wrongly thought that they are fascinated. We ought first to remember that natural lights, concentrated at one point like our artificial lights, are extremely rare in Nature. The light of day, which is the light of wild animals, is not concentrated at one point. Insects, when they are in darkness--underground, beneath bark or leaves--are accustomed to reach the open air, where the light is everywhere diffused, by directing themselves towards the luminous point. At night, when they fly towards a lamp, they are evidently deceived, and their small brains cannot comprehend the novelty of this light concentrated at one spot.

Consequently, their fruitless efforts are again and again renewed against the flame, and the poor innocents end by burning themselves.

Several domestic insects, which have become little by little adapted to artificial light in the course of generations, no longer allow themselves to be deceived thereby. This is the case with house-flies.

Bees distinguish all colours, and seldom confound any but blue and green; while wasps scarcely react to differences of colour, but note better the shape of an object, and note, for instance, where the place of honey is; so that a change of colour on the disc whereon the honey is placed hardly upsets them. Further, wasps have a better sense of smell than bees.

The chief discovery regarding the vision of insects made in the last thirty years is that of Lubbock, who proved that ants perceive the ultra-violet rays of the spectrum, which we are unable, or almost unable, to perceive.

It has lately been proved also that many insects appreciate light by the skin.

They do not see as clearly as we do; but when they possess well-developed compound eyes they appreciate size, and more or less distinctly the contours of objects.

Ants have a great faculty for recognition, which probably testifies to their vision and visual memory. Lubbock observed ants which actually recognised each other after more than a year of separation.

_III.--Smell, Taste, Hearing, Pain_

Smell is very important in insects. It is difficult for us to judge of, since man is of all the vertebrates except the whales, perhaps, the one in which this sense is most rudimentary. We can evidently, therefore, form only a feeble idea of the world of knowledge imparted by a smell to a dog, a mole, a hedgehog, or an insect. The instruments of smell are the antennae. A poor ant without antennae is as lost as a blind man who is also deaf and dumb. This appears from its complete social inactivity, its isolation, its incapacity to guide itself and to find its food. It can, therefore, be boldly supposed that the antennae and their power of smell, as much on contact as at a distance, const.i.tute the social sense of ants, the sense which allows them to recognise one another, to tend to their larvae, and mutually help one another, and also the sense which awakens their greedy appet.i.tes, their violent hatred for every being foreign to the colony, the sense which princ.i.p.ally guides them--a little helped by vision, especially in certain species--in the long and patient travels which they have to undertake, which makes them find their way back, find their plant-lice, and all their other means of subsistence.

As the philosopher Herbert Spencer has well pointed out, the visceral sensations of man, and those internal senses which, like smell, can only make an impression of one kind as regards s.p.a.ce--two simultaneous odours can only be appreciated by us as a mixture--are precisely those by which we can gain little or no information relative to s.p.a.ce. Our vision, on the contrary, which localises the rays from various distant points of s.p.a.ce on various distinct points of our retina at the same time, is our most relational sense, that which gives us the most vast ideas of s.p.a.ce.

But the antennae of insects are an olfactory organ turned inside out, prominent in s.p.a.ce, and, further, very mobile. This allows us to suppose that the sense of smell may be much more relational than ours, that the sensations thence derived give them ideas of s.p.a.ce and of direction which may be qualitatively different from ours.

Taste exists in insects, and has been very widely written on, but somewhat inconclusively. The organs of taste probably are to be found in the jaws and at the base of the tongue. This sense can be observed in ants, bees, and wasps; and everyone has seen how caterpillars especially recognise by taste the plants which suit them.

Much has been written on the hearing of insects; but, in my judgment, only crickets and several other insects of that cla.s.s appear to perceive sounds. Erroneous views have been due to confusing hearing with mechanical vibrations.

We must not forget that the specialisation of the organ of hearing has reached in man a delicacy of detail which is evidently not found again in lower vertebrates.

Pain is much less developed in insects than in warm-blooded vertebrates.

Otherwise, one could not see either an ant, with its abdomen or antennae cut off, gorge itself with honey; or a humble-bee, in which the antennae and all the front of the head had been removed, go to find and pillage flowers; or a spider, the foot of which had been broken, feed immediately on this, its own foot, as I myself have seen; or, finally, a caterpillar, wounded at the "tail" end, devour itself, beginning behind, as I have observed more than once.

_IV.--Insect Reason and Pa.s.sions_

Insects reason, and the most intelligent among them, the social hymenoptera, especially the wasps and ants, even reason much more than one is tempted to believe when one observes the regularly recurring mechanism of their instincts. To observe and understand these reasonings well, it is necessary to mislead their instinct. Further, one may remark little bursts of plastic judgment, of combinations--extremely limited, it is true--which, in forcing them an instant from the beaten track of their automatism, help them to overcome difficulties, and to decide between two dangers. From the point of view of instinct and intelligence, or rather of reason, there are not, therefore, absolute contrasts between the insect, the mammal, and the man.

Finally, insects have pa.s.sions which are more or less bound up with their instincts. And these pa.s.sions vary enormously, according to the species. I have noted the following pa.s.sions or traits of character among ants: choler, hatred, devotion, activity, perseverance, and gluttony. I have added thereto the discouragement which is sometimes shown in a striking manner at the time of a defeat, and which can become real despair; the fear which is shown among ants when they are alone, while it disappears when they are numerous. I can add further the momentary temerity whereby certain ants, knowing the enemy to be weakened and discouraged, hurl themselves alone in the midst of the black ma.s.ses of enemies larger than themselves, hustling them without taking the least further precaution.

When we study the manners of an insect, it is necessary for us to take account of its mental faculties as well as of its sense organs.

Intelligent insects make better use of their senses, especially by combining them in various ways. It is possible to study such insects in their homes in a more varied and more complete manner, allowing greater accuracy of observations.

GALILEO

Dialogues on the System of the World

Galileo Galilei, famous as an astronomer and as an experimental physicist, was born at Pisa, in Italy, Feb. 18, 1564. His talents were most multifarious and remarkable; but his mathematical and mechanical genius was dominant from the first. As a child he constructed mechanical toys, and as a young man he made one of his most important discoveries, which was that of the pendulum as an agent in the measurement of time, and invented the hydrostatic balance, by which the specific gravity of solid bodies might be ascertained. At the age of 24 a learned treatise on the centre of gravity of solids led to a lectureship at Pisa University. Driven from Pisa by the enmity of Aristotelians, he went to Padua University, where he invented a kind of thermometer, a proportional compa.s.s, a microscope, and a telescope. The last invention bore fruit in astronomical discoveries, and in 1610 he discovered four of the moons of Jupiter. His promulgation of the Copernican doctrine led to renewed attacks by the Aristotelians, and to censure by the Inquisition. (See Religion, vol. xiii.) Notwithstanding this censure, he published in 1632 his "Dialogues on the System of the World." The interlocutors in the "Dialogues,"

with the exception of Salviatus, who expounds the views of the author himself, represent two of Galileo's early friends. For the "Dialogues" he was sentenced by the Inquisition to incarceration at its pleasure, and enjoined to recite penitential psalms once a week for three years. His life thereafter was full of sorrow, and in 1637 blindness added to his woes; but the fire of his genius still burnt on till his death on January 8, 1642.

_Does the Earth Move_

SALVIATUS: Now, let Simplicius propound those doubts which dissuade him from believing that the earth may move, as the other planets, round a fixed centre.

SIMPLICIUS: The first and greatest difficulty is that it is impossible both to be in a centre and to be far from it. If the earth move in a circle it cannot remain in the centre of the zodiac; but Aristotle, Ptolemy and others have proved that it is in the centre of the zodiac.

SALVIATUS: There is no question that the earth cannot be in the centre of a circle round whose circ.u.mference it moves. But tell me what centre do you mean?

SIMPLICIUS: I mean the centre of the universe, of the whole world, of the starry sphere.

SALVIATUS: No one has ever proved that the universe is finite and figurative; but granting that it is finite and spherical, and has therefore a centre, we have still to give reasons why we should believe that the earth is at its centre.

SIMPLICIUS: Aristotle has proved in a hundred ways that the universe is finite and spherical.

SALVIATUS: Aristotle's proof that the universe was finite and spherical was derived essentially from the consideration that it moved; and seeing that centre and figure were inferred by Aristotle from its mobility, it will be reasonable if we endeavour to find from the circular motions of mundane bodies the centre's proper place. Aristotle himself came to the conclusion that all the celestial spheres revolve round the earth, which is placed at the centre of the universe. But tell me, Simplicius, supposing Aristotle found that one of the two propositions must be false, and that either the celestial spheres do not revolve or that the earth is not the centre round which they revolve, which proposition would he prefer to give up?

SIMPLICIUS: I believe that the Peripatetics----

SALVIATUS: I do not ask the Peripatetics, I ask Aristotle. As for the Peripatetics, they, as humble va.s.sals of Aristotle, would deny all the experiments and all the observations in the world; nay, would also refuse to see them, and would say that the universe is as Aristotle writeth, and not as Nature will have it; for, deprived of the shield of his authority, with what do you think they would appear in the field?

Tell me, therefore, what Aristotle himself would do.

SIMPLICIUS: To tell you the truth, I do not know how to decide which is the lesser inconvenience.

SALVIATUS: Seeing you do not know, let us examine which would be the more rational choice, and let us a.s.sume that Aristotle would have chosen so. Granting with Aristotle that the universe has a spherical figure and moveth circularly round a centre, it is reasonable to believe that the starry orbs move round the centre of the universe or round some separate centre?

SIMPLICIUS: I would say that it were much more reasonable to believe that they move with the universe round the centre of the universe.

SALVIATUS: But they move round the sun and not round the earth; therefore the sun and not the earth is the centre of the universe.

SIMPLICIUS: Whence, then, do you argue that it is the sun and not the earth that is the centre of the planetary revolutions?