( cxxxvii ) 



the motive springs of many of them, that is, to the emotions 

 which undoubtedly prompt or accompany them. The differ- 

 ences in their habits and actions may or may not belong to the 

 class on which the issues of life and death depend, but must be 

 materially influenced by the conditions which affect vigour 

 and energy, and the emotions which may prompt and regulate 

 action cannot, I think, be passed over in a paper referring to 

 habits. 



Lord Avebury * and Dr. Sharp,! who have given thought to 

 the subject, are among those who hav^e shown that insects are 

 not to be treated as insentient machines, but that they have 

 what we know by the general name of emotions. 



Many of these emotions, doubtless, are of the simple ele- 

 mentary kind which seem common to all animals that have to 

 strive for their living or for their race preservation — such as 

 anger in combat, ardour in pursuit, fear in flight, resentment 

 at disturbance — emotions which we human beings can hardly 

 do without when we engage in action, for they supply such 

 an almost necessary stimulus that apathy is nearly synonymous 

 with inaction. There are many insects indeed to which we 

 should begrudge such a word as emotion, unless we are to 

 include in it impulses of the lowest order. It is difficult to 

 suppose that the worm-like female Psychid — blind, legless, 

 wingless, can be anything more than a machine for continuing 

 her species, incapable herself of any but the most rudimentary 

 impulses, however capable of inspiring emotion in her ardent 

 and restless pursuers of the opposite sex. But many, nay 

 most, insects seem to perform actions and display habits 



* "Even we, far removed as we are in organisation, habits, and sentiments 

 from a fi}- or bee, can yet feel the difference between a contented hum and 

 an angry buzz." — "Senses of Animals," International Scientific Series, vol. 

 Ixv, pp. 71-2. Elsewhere he mentions that flies and gnats produce 

 sounds through the spiracles, Eristalis and Syrphus doing so while sitting 

 quietly, and refers to the hum of an angry bee as proverbial ; in the 

 Diptera and Libellulffi the thoracic spiracles produce sounds, the voice 

 appears to some extent to be under the control of the will. — lb. p. 68. 



t "A company of gnats dancing in the rays glinting through the 

 bushes on a summer evening or in the afternoon of an autumnal day may 

 by means of acute perceptions of lights and shades be enjoying an ocular 

 treat as varied and as exhilarating to them as the prospect we, enjoy from 

 the summit of Righi or Pilatus, while at the same moment by means of 

 an extreme sensitiveness to movement and its direction they may be taking 

 part in a rhythmical concert of no mean order of excellence.'' — Dr. Sharp, 

 Presidential Address to this Society, 1888, p. Ixi. 



