INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS DURING THE YEAR 1875. cxci 



is so great, and the insect-fauna of the earth, even of the old- 

 er portions of the globe, as, for example, the older United 

 States, is so little known, that students are still, and will be 

 for years, busied with the merely preliminary work of de- 

 scriptive entomology. 



As a contribution to animal psychology, Lubbock's second 

 paper on Bees, Wasps, and Ants claims notice. The merit 

 of this tract is that a daily journal of the doings of individ- 

 ual insects is given, from which the reader may judge as to 

 the correctness of the authors conclusions. He enumerates 

 a number of facts showing that " some bees, at any rate, do not 

 communicate with their sisters, even if they find an unten- 

 anted comb full of honey, which to them would be a perfect 

 Eldorado." So far from having been able to discover any 

 evidence of affection among them, " they appear to be thor- 

 oughly callous and utterly indifferent to one another." Their 

 alleged devotion to the queen is " of the most limited char- 

 acter." That bees can distinguish scents is certain. While 

 acknowledging the truth of Langstroth's statement that the 

 bees of one hive know each other, he thinks it is by the sense 

 of smell, and not by an act of the intellect. Bees differ as to 

 the facility with which they find their way about. He then 

 says, if " bees are to be credited with any moral feelings at 

 all, I fear the experience of all bee-keepers shows that they 

 have no conscientious scruples about robbing their weaker 

 brethren." Regarding the industry of ants, he gives quite 

 full statistics. He then gives some interesting experiments 

 showing that ants communicate news to each other. 



Frequent reference is made by Lubbock to Forel's new 

 work, "Les Fourmis de la Suisse," a quarto work of 455 pages, 

 with two plates, published at Zurich in 1874. As this is the 

 most important w T ork on insects of the last two years, we 

 translate an abstract of its contents given by Blanchard in 

 La Revue Scieiitifique. The work is worthy to succeed that 

 of the author's fellow-countryman, Pierre Hiiber. After de- 

 scribing the species, the author considers the relations be- 

 tween the peculiarities of structure and the adaptation for 

 work or war. The descriptions are followed by anatomical 

 and physiological studies of different organs, accompanied 

 by interesting remarks concerning instinct and intelligence. 

 The doings of ants in rendering mutual services, or in carinsr 



