360 HALF HOURS WITH INSECTS. [Packard. 



We have endeavored to establish the fact that insects are 

 extremely sensitive to impressions made by external objects 

 upon the senses. Using the language of the mental philoso- 

 phers, who divide the human mind into the sensibilities, the 

 will, and the intellect, any one will grant that insects are 

 certainly endowed with sensibilities, the first subdivision of 

 the intellect. 



Having perceived an object, or received an impression on 

 its organs of smell or hearing, such as the odor of deca3"ed 

 carrion or of a flower, the carrion beetle or bee immediately 

 flies to the object. How strong impulses arise from this 

 acuteness of the sense of smell in the carrion beetle is 

 shown by the following fact mentioned by Kirby and Spence. 

 "A German naturalist, Gleditsch, relates that he one day 

 spitted a toad on a stick, which he fixed upright in the 

 ground. A number of burying beetles (Necrophoriis ves- 

 pillo) came around it ; but as they could do nothing with 

 the toad while in the air, they mined under the base of the 

 stick till it fell, and then buried toad and stick together." 

 Some insects are found in the flowers of plants which have 

 the smell of carrion, and frequent no oilier plants. Here is 

 certainly a power of choice, an act of volition ; the insect 

 rejects pleasant smelling flowers for bad smelling ones. 

 This act involves, however, not only powers of the will, but 

 of the intellect also, as the very fact of its making a clioice 

 proves that different odors affect it, and that it selects a 

 certain odor in preference to another. The flesh fly has 

 been known to be so misled by the odor of bad smelling 

 plants that it has laid its eggs in the flowers of Stapelia hir- 

 suta instead of carrion. (Kirby and Spence.) 



If any one should have the hardihood to deny that insects 

 exercise powers of volition, that in other words, they do not 

 follow the lead of their senses, acute as we now know they 

 are, let him catch an humble bee between his fingers, and see 

 if the creature hesitates to use its sting. He will very soon 



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