COLOR AND TIIK COLOJl SENSE. 343 



between the lower crustaceans and men, us well as between those animals 

 and ants. While we see the different colors and their different intensi- 

 ties, the inferior crustaceans neither behold any color or the different 

 variations of intensity therein. We perceive colors as colors, they per- 

 ceive them only as light. ^ 



Mr. Alfred R. Wallace does not admit that the fact that tiie lower ani- 

 mals distinguish what are to us diversities of color, proves that their sen- 

 sations of color bear any resemblance to ours. The insects' capacity to 

 distinguish red from blue may be and probably is due to preceptions of 

 a totally distinct nature.^ 



We have much testimony that insects have a decided color sense. 



Most imiiortant and decisive are, [lerhaps, the remarkable investigations 



of Sir .John Lubbock, whose experiments indicate that ants are 



° °^ „ sensitive to tlie ordinary colors of the solar spectrum. It he- 

 Sense CI , , , ',11-1 i 1 



Insects comes probable, moreover, that the ultra violet rays must make 

 themselves apparent to ants as a distinct and separate color, of 

 which we can form no idea, but as unlike the rest as red is from yellow 

 or green from violet. He adds, that as few of the colors in Nature are 

 pure, but almost all arise from the combination of rays of different wave 

 lengths, and as in such cases a visible resultant would be composed not 

 only of the rays which we see, but of these and the ultra violet, it would 

 appear that the colors of objects and the general aspect of Nature must 

 present to ants a very different appearance from what it does to us.^ 



Lubbock has also shown that laees have a decided preference between 

 colors, and that blue is distinctly their favorite, although yellow is much 

 liked.* He also demonstrates that wasps are capable of distinguishing 

 color, although they do not seem to be so much guided by it as bees are.^ 

 The fact having thus been established, that among two classes of the 

 Arthropods, namely, the Crustacea and the Insecta, there are found genera 

 which show a decided color sense, prepares us to expect the same fact in 

 the case of the Arachnida, and indeed of all other Arthropods. 



The best sustained and most conclusive experiments upon spiders them- 

 selves, of which I have knowledge, were made by Professor 

 Spiders: and Mrs. Peckham in the neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wiscon- 

 Peck-^ sin."^ Their method of procedure was as follows : A cage was 

 ^^^ . constructed, formed of four differently colored compartments, 

 ments ^^^ made of glass and opening freely into one another. The 

 cage was placed on a table on a covered porch, with the wall 

 of the house on one side, while the other sides were exposed to light. A 



' " Les Crustaces inferieurs distinguent-ils les couleurs ? " (Do the inferior crustaceans 

 distinguish color?) Par M. :Merejkowski. ^ -Wallace, "Tropical Nature," page 238. 



3 " Ants, Bees, and Wasps," page 220. * Ibid., page 310. ^ Ibid., 316. 



* "Some Observations on the Mental Powers of Spiders," Journal of Morphology, Vol. I., 

 December, 1887. 



