198 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



So here Avere the little creatures busily at work, each sunny day, rasp- 

 ing off particles of the paper, which with lightning-like rapidity would 

 be collected into compact little bundles, tucked under the chin and 

 held there with the tibite of the forelegs while being borne away to 

 the nest. The innovation was practiced in 1891 by comparatively few 

 individuals, the great majority of the insects, as I learned by investi- 

 gation, still adhering to the accustomed method of obtaining wood tiber 

 from weather-worn boards, etc. In the course of the past summer, 

 however, a knowledge of the discovery seemed to have been communi- 

 cated to a great number of the families and workers of the wasp colo- 

 nies, for, if we visited our vineyard on any pleasant day from ten to 

 four o'clock, we were sure to find hundreds of the insects busily 

 engaged cutting, rasping and perforating the bags, flying away with 

 their booty and speedily returning for more. Xor did I see, in the 

 course of the entire season, a single wasp of this particular species 

 gathering fibers from fences or buildings. To the entomologist this 

 modification of original habit is of exceeding interest ; but to the grape- 

 grower, who generally finds it sufficiently laborious to bag his grapes 

 once in a season, the destruction caused by these insects is an example- 

 of the most deplorable use of intelligence. 



Singularly enough, no other species of wasps not even the most 

 closely allied Polistes, have as yet learned this, to us, unfortunate use 

 of the grape bags. That the examples given of extinct in its apparently 

 stationary stage of development, or on the other hand, as it seems 

 modified by process undistinguishable from reason, will greatly assist 

 in our knowledge of the faculty in its essence, I cannot hope. My 

 principal object in the presentation of these notes is to call attention 

 to the endless attractions of the subject, especially when we cease to 

 regard the mentality of the lower animals as confined within the fixed 

 limits of specific inheritance. That instinct has reached a far greater 

 development in insects than reason has in man, is not to be denied. 

 That it does not progress is because, taking all circumstances into 

 account, there is no need for progression. Adaptation is as nearly perfect 

 as creative wisdom has seen fit to require, when nature is left to herself. 

 But when man enters the field all these exquisite correlations are dis- 

 turbed, and why should it not be supposed that to be able in some 

 measure to hold their own, insects and some other of the lower animals 

 should be endowed with a latent power of adaptation, not reconcilable 

 with popular ideas of fixed instinct? At all events, the more these 

 subjects are investigated, the richer is found the field for the meta~ 

 physician and the logician, as well as for the mere student of forms and 

 material phenomena. Mary E. Murtfeldt, 



Kirkwood, Missouri. 



