SKETCH OF SIR JOHN LUBBOCK. BART, M. P. 107 



of the Royal, Linngean, and other learned societies. Relative to these 

 subjects he has published an elaborate treatise on one of the obscure 

 groups of insects, entitled a " Monograph of the Thysanura and Col- 

 lembola " (Royal Society, 1873), and works of a more popular charac- 

 ter on the "Origin and Metamorphoses of Insects" and "Wild Flow- 

 ers considered in Relation to Insects," in the latter of which he con- 

 siders the agency of insects in the fertilization of flowers by carrying 

 pollen from flower to flower while in search of food, and the adapta- 

 tion of the flowers to the function of dusting the insects that visit 

 them with their pollen and to the reception of the pollen of other 

 flowers from them. His most recent researches, carried on with the 

 aid of members of his family, have been devoted to the observation of 

 the habits of insects, particularly of wasps, bees, and ants, which have 

 been attended with important discoveries. He has given particular 

 attention to the study of the mental faculties of insects, whether those 

 creatures have any, and to what extent they may be developed, and 

 has made numerous interesting communications on the subject to the 

 British Association and the Royal Institution, which have been ex- 

 tensively published, even in miscellaneous journals, and generally 

 read ; and in connection with this branch he was able to interest the 

 British Association with the life-history of a pet wasp which he kept, 

 to such an extent that its death in the following year was considered 

 worthy of notice in a special paragraph in "Nature." Among the 

 consequences of these publications have been the direction of a greater 

 degree of attention to the biological history of the orders that form 

 the subjects of them, and a higher appreciation of the study of little 

 things. 



Sir John Lubbock also became an active and eminent student of 

 archaeology. He examined the shell-mounds, or kitchen-middens, on 

 the coast of Denmark, to which attention had originally been called by 

 Steenstrup and other Danish antiquaries, and was the first to make Eng- 

 lish readers acquainted with those rude relics of the ancient Scandina- 

 vian savages. He also studied the gravels of the Somme from Amiens 

 to the sea, in search of prehistoric remains, and explored the bone-caves 

 of Dordogne and the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, and examined the 

 archaeological collections in numerous public and private museums. 

 These researches formed the subjects of various memoirs in the " Nat- 

 ural History Review" and other publications, and were finally col- 

 lected, with many additions, and published under the title of " Pre- 

 historic Times as illustrated by Ancient Remains and the Manners and 

 Custonis of Modern Savages," in a work which has passed through 

 five editions. His readings in the literature relating to modern savage 

 life led him to a consideration of the origin of civilization and of the 

 manner in which customs, once all but universal in the infancy of the 

 human race, became altered or narrowed down to the few rude tribes 

 who may now ahme possess them. These inquiries were originally 



