EDUCATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION OF NATURE 271 



difficulties, or, if we still designate their action in this way, the interpre- 

 tation of " reflex " must be profoundly altered. Throughout the 

 animal series improvement in the reaction to environment seems to 

 signify greater nervous flexibility in dealing with experience rather 

 than a complete change of method. In their fascinating paper 8 on 

 the habits of solitary wasps, the Peckhams tell of one who in filling 

 up her nest " put her head down into it and bit away the loose earth 

 from the sides, letting it fall to the bottom of the burrow, and then, 

 after a quantity had accumulated, jammed it down with her head. She 

 then brought earth from the outside and passed it in, afterwards biting 

 more from the sides. "When, at last, the filling was level with the 

 ground, she brought a quantity of fine grains of dirt to the spot and, 

 picking up a small pebble with her mandibles, used it as a hammer, 

 pounding them down with rapid strokes, thus making this spot as hard 

 and firm as the surrounding surface." Soon " she had dropped her 

 stone and was bringing more earth," 9 when she again picked up the 

 pebble and pounded that which was brought until all was hard. 



The power to inhibit, so that the same action does not always 

 follow the same stimulus under the same circumstances, which was 

 observed in Necturus, indicates, perhaps, the first break in the 

 mechanism of primitive instincts. The part that experience plays in 

 the animal's life is becoming more immediate and direct. Just how 

 much consciousness is involved in this, or, indeed, whether there is 

 any, we do not know. Investigation has shown 10 tbat in man con- 

 sciousness of means is not essential to the utilization of experience and 

 there is certainly no reason for thinking it more necessary to the lower 

 animals. 



In the variability of instinct, also, we find mechanical organization 

 less domineering, and in the study of wasps, to which we have just 

 referred, the one preeminent, unmistakable and ever-present fact 

 is variability. " Variability in every particular — in the shape of the 

 nest and the manner of digging it, in the condition of the nest 

 (whether closed or open) when left temporarily, in the method of 

 stinging their prey, in the degree of malaxation, in the manner of 

 carrying the victim, in the way of closing the nest, and last, and most 

 important of all, in the condition produced in the victims of the 

 stinging," some of them dying " long before the larva is ready to begin 

 on them, while others live long past the time at which they would have 

 been attacked and destroyed " had not the investigation " interfered 



* " On the Instincts and Habits of the Solitary Wasps," by Geo. W. and 

 Elizabeth G. Peckham, Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey, 

 Bulletin No. 2, Scientific Series No. 1, Madison, Wis., 1898. 



' hoc. cit., pp. 22-23. 



10 Swift, " The Psychology of Learning," Am. Jour, of Psychology, Vol. 14, 

 p. 217. 



11 Loc. cit., p. 30. 



