330 REMARKS ON INSECTS. 



»ucb an obstreperous noise every night in his house, as to banish 

 peace from the place. The only method I could at that time 

 recommend was the issue oi' personal process against the cricket, in 

 order that he might be compelled to appear before " Our Lord the 

 King, at Westminster." But I have since learnt an easier remedy, 

 ■which I shall state for the relief of all enemies to noise. On some 

 evening in the cricket season, procure a band, the greater the 

 number of instruments the better, and it is of no consequence if 

 the amalgamation of sweet sounds be altogether harmonious or 

 not, so that the noise made be considerable. Let this din be kept 

 up throughout the whole night, and the crickets will be so astound- 

 ed that they will forthwith slink off, and desert the haunted 

 mansion. 



On the organs of sight I shall not here dilate — their structure is 

 however, remarkable. Nearly all winged insects have compound 

 eyes, which consist of a great number of hexagonal slightly 

 convex lenses, of which 17,325 have been counted in the eye of a 

 butterfly. 



The instinct, mind, or whatever else we please to call it, in 

 insects, must assuredly place them next in rank to the vertebrata, 

 many of whom they surpass in skill and ingenuity. But then this 

 skill is impressed upon them, it is thought, when they enter the 

 "world, and they are precluded from a higher advance in the scale of 

 perfection. Perhaps this opinion will hereafter be found to require 

 some modification. What ideas they may entertain of man we can 

 hardly imagine, because perhaps none, certainly very few insects, 

 can be said ever to have been tamed. Bees, indeed, partly domes- 

 ticated, certainly know their owner, and will bear from him liberties 

 they would not from a stranger. They would seem also to possess 

 a higher degree of intelligence than most other insects, and this is 

 confirmed by their anatomical structure. For Straus Durckheim 

 remarks,* that as in higher animals the degree of intelligence is in 

 proportion to the number of convolutions of the cerebrum, so 

 he found that hymenopterous insects (among which bees rank) 

 were the only ones where he could detect in the ganglion, or brain 

 of the head, any well-marked convolutions. Wasps seem often to 

 act as if instigated by passion, and generally rush furiously to 

 attack the face, as I have found to my cost. It seems, however, 

 somewhat strange, that in attacking a wasp's nest, no fear need be 

 entertained from the bands that are out on duty, provided the gar- 

 rison within are secured, and prevented from egress — if any of 

 these are enabled to come forth and communicate the state of 

 affairs, the event may prove serious. A collector I was well 

 acquainted with, informed me, that having one afternoon dug up a 

 •wasp's nest for the sake of that curious interloper amongst them, 

 the Rhipiphorus paradoxus, he was carrying it off rather carelessly, 

 "when, the entrance not having been so fully closed up as it ought 

 to have been, two or three wasps contrived to get out, and almost 



• Bull, des Sci. N&t, 



