THE PSYCHIC LIFE OF INSECTS. 1 



By E. L. BorviER. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The insects are animals which seem to defy our imagination by 

 the strangeness of their forms and the surprising character of their 

 habits. In his " War of the Worlds," Wells, the fiction writer, sur- 

 prises us with his belligerent Tripods who sweep down as con- 

 querers on our planet, where they exterminate and terrify unhappy 

 humanity. This flight of the imagination appears to exceed all 

 reason, but how far does it not fall short of that which Nature 

 herself provides for our astonishment in the realm of the Articu- 

 lates ! Here, it is true, we do not meet with Tripods, but the Hexa- 

 pods or Insects have invaded the entire terrestrial domain, where 

 they make their power terribly felt; the Octopods or Arachnids 

 share this domain both with the Insects and with the Myriapods, 

 these latter often possessing more than a hundred pairs of legs; 

 while in the water swarm the Crustaceans which rival the Myriapods 

 in the number of their appendages. And what do the organs with 

 which Wells endows his Tripods amount to when compared with 

 those which serve as arms or ornaments to a host of Articulates; 

 when compared with the enormous pincers of crabs and lobsters, 

 with the serrated sword-like beak which projects from the forehead 

 of shrimps, with the wonderful trocar at the end of the abdomen in 

 female Hymenoptera, with the overgrown horns which rise from the 

 head and thorax of not a few Scarabaeids, with the many spines brist- 

 ling on the body of the thorny spiders, or with the exceedingly 

 elongated legs which give to the Myriapods of the genus Scutigera 

 their swift gait and terrifying aspect? 



The habits of these animals are just as puzzling as their shapes. 

 What is the meaning of the horrible courtship of spiders and man- 

 tids, where the female's response to the embrace of her mate is canni- 

 balism ? What must we think of the predatory wasps which paralyze 

 with dagger thrusts the victims intended for their larvae ? What of 

 the Brachonids and Ichneumons, which deposit their eggs either on 

 or in the body of other insects ? What, above all, must we think of 



1 A translation by permission of the Introduction and Conclusion of " La vie psychique 

 des Insectes," by E. L. Bouvier ; published by E. Flammarion, Paris. 



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