Social Insects. 47 



common good; they train a soldier and a police force; they are 

 brave in the defense of the communal interest; they protect and 

 defend their sovereign ; they make war and even organize mili 

 tary expeditions; they make slaves and are held in bondage; 

 they encourage and protect other insects which yield them cher 

 ished nourishment; they even go so far as to care for the eggs 

 of such, and thus deliberately rear their nectar-giving kine; 

 they cultivate crops; they providently store food for winter 

 use or in anticipation of an inauspicious season; they give ex 

 pression to satisfaction and pleasure; they exhibit certain baser 

 passions, as jealousy, ill-temper or rage; they even display a cer 

 tain moral sense, and will help, on occasions, the distressed and 

 threatened of their own kind ; they are most assiduous in the 

 care and rearing of their young; they profit by experience; 

 they manifest a pure and simple enjoyment of life by their gam 

 bols and playfulness; they are cleanly to a degree which will, 

 astonish those who for the first time observe their constant lick 

 ing and brushing of all parts of the body ; they exhibit, in short, 

 most of the sense manifestations displayed by higher animals. 

 It may be ingeniously argued that in all these manifestations they 

 are acting as mere automatons, but the same arguments may be, 

 and have been, urged to explain the actions of man. 



So far as experimentation goes, and especially that by Sir John 

 Lubbock, bees are not gifted with the high degree of intelligence 

 with which many writers have credited them, and in this respect 

 do not compare with the higher ants. The Termites are probably 

 the lowest, bees next, wasps next, and ants the highest, in point 

 of intelligence, among social insects. The affection of the bees 

 for their queen, or the deference paid by ants, wasps and Ter 

 mites to theirs, may be viewed as an instinctive expression of 

 their communal obligation to her, which is at once transferred to 

 another by whom she may be replaced ; but our own fealty to our 

 rulers may bear very much the same interpretation. Wasps are 

 more alert and intelligent than bees, and as Lubbock has shown, 

 are measurably susceptible of being tamed. Ants, as we have 

 seen, exhibit a very high degree of intelligence. In fact, the 

 manner in which all these insects work together in harmony, and 

 especially the manner in which certain individuals act as scouts 

 or deliberately set to work to remedy and overcome any exceptional 

 interference with or injury to their habitations, denotes consider- 



