THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 33 



possession of a faculty in these lower organisms that towers above instinct 

 and presents the feature of intelligent reason. This is a subject that 

 cannot very well be discussed in these pages, yet it may not be out of 

 place to say that able writers on the question very generally admit that 

 the habits of insects follow a prescribed law, by some regarded, in a 

 materialistic sense, as mechanical ; and by others, spiritually considered, 

 as in furtherance of a divine edict. This latter view is very cleverly 

 presented by St. George Mivart, in Organic Nature's Riddle : " Our 

 experience," he writes, " is in favor of the existence of an intelligence 

 which can implant in and elicit from unconscious bodies activities that 

 are intelligent in appearance and result ' Uncon- 

 sciously intelligent action,' improperly called ' intelligent,' is that which is 

 called intelligent only as to its results and not in the innermost principle 

 of the creatures which perform such actions." " Instinct," Todd says in 

 his Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology, " is a special internal 

 impulse urging animals to the performance of certain actions which are 

 useful to them or to their kind, but the uses of which they do not them- 

 selves perceive, and their performance of which is a necessary conse- 

 quence of their being placed in certain circumstances," 



If such definitions are accepted, how are they to be reconciled with 

 the marvellous statement as given by Dr. Fitch ? That the larva should 

 prune the branch to prevent the flow of sap would be a necessary conse- 

 quence of its being placed in certain circumstances, but to do so that the 

 branch may fall to the ground presents a course of reasoning that relates 

 to a condition foreign to the then existing environment. The habits of 

 this beetle from the period of egg-hatching, as given by Dr. Fitch, dis- 

 playing as it did to him extraordinary intelligence, impress me as present- 

 ing the most natural instinctive qualities. The ova, he says, is deposited 

 on a small green twig, the soft pulpy -tissues of which nourish the infant 

 larva, which when increased in size and strength, attacks the hard wood of 

 the branch, transversely, in a circular direction, consuming it all, leaving 

 the branch supported only by the bark. From these premises, without 

 pursuing the subject further, it is evident that the infant larva requires 

 sap-wood for its sustenance, which it derives from the twig, but so soon as 

 its strength permits, it seeks for dead-wood by attacking the branch, 

 which is found more and more free from sap as the work of severance 

 progresses. The aim therefore from the start is to obtain the dead-wood, 



