98 GENERAL ZOOLOGY 



or intelligent knowledge of the young not yet born, much 

 less any precise understanding of their needs. Yet the wasp 

 gathers the spiders without being taught to do so. Similarly 

 when the butterfly selects a certain kind of plant on which 

 to lay the eggs her act is not intelligent but probably a 

 combination of instincts and reflexes. 



Among the higher insects, especially among the social 

 Hymenoptera such as the wasps and ants, many observa- 

 tions have been made upon actions that are interpreted as 

 involving intelligence. In many of these the enthusiasm of 

 the observer has run away with his judgment. There is an 

 impression that ants behave with a high degree of intelli- 

 gence, yet when anyone studies them carefully he finds 

 that in many instances they perform their tasks in a purely 

 reflex, mechanical way and show no ability to modify their 

 actions when conditions are changed for them. One observer 

 noticed that a wasp going diligently about the feeding of 

 young, bit pieces from a larva and persisted in trying to get 

 them into the mouth of the dead larva from which they were 

 cut. It is really doubtful if even the Hymenoptera have any 

 power of abstract reasoning. The actions of most insects 

 thus seem to be chiefly the lower types of behavior though 

 intelligence may play some part. 



Man versus Insects. Professor S. A. Forbes of the Univer- 

 sity of Illinois has aptly expressed the struggle between 

 insects and man: 



We commonly think of ourselves as the lords and conquerors of 

 nature, but insects had thoroughly mastered the world and taken 

 full possession of it long before man began the attempt. They had, 

 consequently, all the advantage of a possession of the field when 

 the contest began, and they have disputed every step of our in- 

 vasion of their original domain so persistently and so successfully 

 that we can even yet scarcely flatter ourselves that we have gained 

 any very important advantage over them. 



