14 INSECTS 



tile sense is popularly and probably with justice located 

 chiefly in the antennae; but the mouth feelers or palpi 

 are also organs of touch and tactile hairs may occur on 

 any part of the body or its appendages. No one insect 

 species has all these senses equally well developed, and 

 few have more than one or two really so specialized as 

 to be conspicuous. There are more, indeed, which have 

 none of them more than rudimentarily present and 

 probably a fairly well-developed general sense of per- 

 ception is enough for the majority. Such a sense enables 

 the insect to recognize the vibrations that mean food, 

 a mate and a place to oviposit and that is all that is 

 really necessary to enable it to fill its place in life. As 

 to that tactile sense that implies a recognition of what 

 we know as pain, I believe it to be very feebly developed. 

 I do not indeed assert that insects are insensible to pain ; 

 but all observations indicate that they appreciate it 

 very little and very temporarily: real suffering I do 

 not believe them capable of at all. 



An interesting question that is often raised in this 

 connection is whether insects reason or whether all 

 their actions are instinctive. I do not believe that 

 any one can study insects at all closely without crediting 

 them with a certain amount of reasoning power. Some 

 species do such incredibly stupid things occasionally 

 that it would be a libel on instinct to charge it with such 

 actions, and often specimens of the same species will 

 do things so differently that individuality and ratio- 

 cination must be accepted as accounting for the differ- 

 ence. To be sure it is not a very high grade of intelli- 

 gence that is manifested, using our own attainments as 

 a standard; but it is such a grade as brings out the 

 difference between individuals and species and enables 

 one to do well what the other fails in, habitually. It is 

 in the Hymenoptera and especially among the social forms 



