“ Insect Life.” } 291 
what use are eyes?” How then do they fly straight to their 
homes? Or to take an instance familiar to every one—how does 
a dragon-fly hawk for his prey and dart unerringly upon it if he 
be blind? There is no answer, unless this is an answer, “ that it 
would be wiser to leave their conduct unexplained than to resort 
to an explanation which is no explanation at all, or which proves 
too much; for many of the actions of bees and spiders, if they 
imply sight, imply also an intelligent and spontaneous use of it.” 
Do their actions, then, imply less intelligence if their authors be 
blind ? 
SMELL. 
“ ‘The general objection still obtains here—the absence of a brain 
to receive the message of the sense and to determine the consequent 
act.” The attraction of insects to certain plants and substances is 
then noticed; and it is added, “ but if we hesitate to admit or 
deny the sense of smell to insects, in what other way can we 
explain, or how indeed can we explain at all, such facts. Indeed 
we know not! but this we certainly know, that there are many 
acts performed by insects which cannot be explained at all by the 
operation of any of the senses, nor by all of them together; acts 
which we are fajn to refer, accordingly, to the mysterious power 
called instinct.” So that because we cannot account for some of 
the acts performed by insects, we are to give up each one of them 
as inexplicable. It would be about as wise to give up the New- 
tonian theory of the universe, because we cannot thereby fully 
account for the falling stars. Can any one doubt that the flesh-fly 
visits carrion and that moths are attracted to sugar by the sense 
of smell ? 
Taste. 
“Without taste,’ says an eminent modern writer, ‘no animal 
could continue its existence; it is a sense indispensable to all 
organized beings, though its peculiarities cannot always be traced 
to the structure or form of the organs.’ This statement, how- 
ever, is an assuming of the question, nor is it possible to acquiesce 
in it. Do not the absorbents select without tasting, and are not 
some animals little better than absorbents? That some insects 
show a marked preference for this or the other kind of nourish- 
ment is, if true, anything but conclusive as to their taste; for one 
is at a loss to conceive how, if insects were led by flavour to the 
choice of food, so many should be found to feed on insipid sub- | 
stances.” Now I do not see that this disproves the power of 
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