INSTINCT IN INSECTS. 



149 



something less than id. a mile, or T ^ part of a penny each. For, 

 although passengers require station accommodation, they unload 

 themselves, which coals do not. 



In the autumn of 1869, the Times took up the railway problem, 

 and, in a series of very able articles, endeavored to show the errors of 

 the present state of things. Although advocated by so powerful a 

 pen, the reforms still remain unaccomplished indeed, uucommenced. 

 It was then shown that in practice every passenger on a railway in- 

 volved over 2 tons of iron and timber to carry him. Or, according 

 to Mr. Haughton, no more than 30 per cent, of the load which is 

 hauled by a goods-train represents paying weight, the remaining 70 

 per cent, being dead weight. This seems astonishing truly, but it is 

 nothing to the passenger-trains, where only 5 per cent., or even less, 

 of the load pays, the remaining 95 per cent, being made up of ap- 

 parently dead and unprofitable material. It is well to keep this clearly 

 in view. In talking about a passenger, with relation to a railway, one 

 must not picture to one's self a respectable English country gentleman, 

 riding perhaps some 14 stone, but some Homeric giant, magnified into 

 prehistoric proportions, weightier than an ordinary Ceylonese elephant, 

 and representing about 20 to 25 full sacks of coal, or 2^ tons. Ab- 

 stract from Quarterly Journal of Science. 







INSTINCT IN INSECTS. 



By GEORGE POUCHET. 



TRANSLATED BY A. R. MACDONOUGH, ESQ. 

 II. 



LET us now dwell a little on two grand facts presented to us by 

 the animated world, these two properties of living beings equally 

 undeniable and unintelligible in their essence habit, and hereditary 

 tendency ; and let us see how, in Darwin's theory, they will combine 

 with intelligence. As the theory is well known, we need not state it. 

 Cuvier believed in the unchangeableness of the animal forms placed 

 on the globe by the Creator after each of the great convulsions through 

 which, as he held, our planet has passed. Modern geology questions 

 these violent commotions, and Darwin, taking up in his turn Lamarck's 

 ideas, after fifty years of scientific progress, maintains, by almost irre- 

 sistible arguments, that animal forms, instead of being unchangeable, as 

 Cuvier supposed, are slowly modified, under the control of time, of cir- 

 cumstances, and of the energies with which each individual and each 

 race "fight the battle of existence." That individual which brings 

 into life a slight yet advantageous modification of its organs will sue- 



