BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF HENRY MILNE -EDWARDS. 727 



We see fioin tliis liow the new piiuciitle, slightly vagne at the first 

 glauee, acquires an ever-increasing clearness and importance by reason 

 of its chain of deductions. The applications that may be made of this 

 far-reaching principle are innumerable and infinitely varied,- it may be 

 said it controls the entire catalogue of animal life. 



We must not forget that this progress is often relative. If mollusks 

 have a general superiority over insects because of their digestive appa- 

 ratus and circulation, they are on the contrary inferior in their organs 

 of locomotion and the activity of their life in general. In a higher 

 order, if man is superior in intelligence to the dog, he has less highly 

 developed olfactory organs; his sense of sight is also equally inferior to 

 that of most 1 )irds. 



Other examples still might be givcMi. In tact, we have likened the 

 principle of the division of labor in animal organisms to that which 

 takes place in the history of humanity. But if we compare societies 

 of animals to human societies we will see that the functional division of 

 social work is often carried to a greater extent among the former than 

 among men. Among ants and bees the work of reproduction of the 

 species is distinct from the work of maintaining the colony. Certain 

 individuals, sometimes one only, are set aside for the generative office. 

 There is only one female in a hive of bees, while the colony is fed and 

 supporte<l by the activity of the working bees that have become sterile 

 by the atroi)hy of the organs of generation. To a systematic mind this 

 feature of animal societies would seem to be a mark of superiority, but 

 I shall not insist upon this claim. I have only wished to show the 

 relation the progress of the lower animals bears to our own, and the 

 analogies that exist in certain respects. 



Whatever these analogies may be they add nothing to the impor- 

 tance of tlie iniiiciple of the division of labor, and the interest of the 

 general deductions flowing therefrom. It is greatly to the honor of 

 Milne-Edwards that he has shown the full bearing of this principle, 

 and followed up its a])plication with a keenness of perception, method of 

 logic, and force of deduction that are incomparable. However exten- 

 sive the work of a learned man may be, whatever personal authority 

 he may derive from his times, his name rests with posterity only on 

 what it stands for, whether tliis be the discovery or explanation of 

 some renuirkable fact, or the demonstration of a general theory and 

 its bearing upon a science as a whole. This latter claim Milne- 

 Edwards had the good fortune, the talent, and the htsting glory to 

 establish, and in consequence his name will remain among those of 

 the leading naturalists of the nineteenth century. 



