Social Insects. 



41 



or vibrations, are for the most part deaf to sounds which affect 

 us. That they have a sense of sound is equally certain, but its 

 range is very different from ours. A sensitive flame arranged for 

 Lubbock by the late Prof. Tyndall, gave no response from ants, 

 and a sensitive microphone arranged for him by Prof. Bell gave 

 record of no other sound than the patter of feet in walking. But 

 the most sensitive tests we can experimentally apply may be, and 

 doubtless are, too gross to adjust themselves to the finer sensibil 

 ities of such minute, active and nervous creatures. There can 

 be no question that insects not only produce sounds, but receive 

 the impression of sounds entirely beyond our own range of per- 



FIG. 10. SOME ANTENNAE OF CCLECPTERA : a, lyiidius ; b, Corymbites ; c, Prionocy- 

 phon ; d, Acneits ; e, Dendroides ; f, Diueutes ; g, I Y acrmosterna ; h, Bolbocerus ; t, 

 Adraiies, (after L,eConte and Horn). All greatly enlarged. 



ception, or as Lubbock puts it, that "we can no more form an 

 idea of than we should have been able to conceive red or green 

 if the human race had been blind. The human ear is sensitive 

 to vibrations reaching at the outside to 38,000 in a second. The 

 sensation of red is produced when 470 millions of millions of 

 vibrations enter the eye in a similar time ; but between these two 

 numbers, vibrations produce on us only the sensation of heat. We 

 have no especial organ of sense adapted to them." It is quite cer 

 tain that ants do make sounds, and the sound-producing organs 011 



