PACKARD.] MENTAL POWERS OF INSECTS. 373 



individual odueation. "Whether this is not the basis of the 

 viigratonj sense, as we may call it, of birds is worth inquiry. 



As an illustration of this power of recognition in the 

 crabs, tlie next class below insects, the following statement 

 of Mr. Robert Fox of F'almouth, England, is contributed by 

 Mr. P:. W. Cox to "Nature" (April 3, 1873). "The fisher- 

 men of Falmouth catch their crabs off the Lizard rocks, and 

 thoy are brought into the harbour at Falmouth alive and 

 impounded in a box for sale, and the shells are branded with 

 marks by which e\evy man knows his own fish. The place 

 where the box is sunk is four miles from the entrance to the 

 harbour, and tliat is above seven miles from the place where 

 they are caught. One of these boxes was broken ; the 

 branded crabs escaped, and two or three days afterwards 

 tlie}' were again caught by the fislierman at the Lizard rocks. 

 They had been carried to Falmouth in a boat. To regain 

 their home they had first to find their waj^ to the mouth of 

 the harbour, and when there, how did they know whether to 

 steer to the right or to the left, and to travel seven miles 

 to their native rocks?" 



But bees could not find their way home from a distance 

 of several miles, unless they possess memory, the third divi- 

 sion of the intellect. 



Unless insects possess memorj', which consists in storing 

 up in the mind, possibly through some change in the struc- 

 ture of the nervous system, the results of external impres- 

 sions, we are at a loss to conceive how they can discriminate 

 or perceive the points of resemblance between two objects 

 aficr having been out of sight of them for a greater or less 

 length of time. We arc therefore, a priori, led to suppose 

 that all insects have memor}'. Bain defines memor}', acqui- 

 sition or retention, as "being the power of continuing in the 

 mind impressions that arc no longer stimulated by the same 

 agent, and of recalling them afterwards by purely mental 

 forces." This definition will hold in insect as well as human 



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