14 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



If the difference of development between the human and 

 canine internal antennre produces all this difference of func- 

 tion, what a gulf may there be between our powers of perceiv- 

 ing material emanations and those possessed by insects ! If 

 my anatomical hypothesis is correct, some insects have protrud- 

 ing nasal organs or out- thrust olfactory nerves as long as all the 

 rest of their bodies. The power of movement of these in all 

 directions afford the means of sensory communication over a 

 corresponding range, instead of being limited merely to the 

 direction of the nostril openings. In some insects, such as the 

 plumed gnat, the antenna? do not appear to be thus movable, 

 but this want of mobility is more than compensated by the 

 multitude of branchings of these wonderful organs, whereby 

 they are simultaneously exposed in every direction. This 

 structure is analogous to the fixed but multiplied eyes of 

 insects, which, by seeing all round at once, compensate for the 

 want of that mobility possessed by others that have but a single 

 eyeball mounted on a flexible and mobile stalk ; that of the 

 spider, for example. 



Such an extension of such a sensory function is equivalent to 

 living in another world of which we have no knowledge and 

 can form no definite conception. We, by our senses of touch 

 and vision, know the shapes and colors of objects, and by our 

 very rudimentary olfactory organs form crude ideas of their 

 chemistry or composition, through the medium of their mate- 

 rial emanations ; but the huge exaggeration of this power in 

 the insect should supply him with instinctive perceptive 

 powers of chemical analysis, a direct acquaintance with the 

 inner molecular constitution of matter far clearer and deeper 

 than we are able to obtain by all the refinements of laboratory 

 analyses or the hypothetical formulating of molecular mathe- 

 maticians. Add this to the other world of sensations produci- 

 ble by the vibratory movements of matter lying between tho?o 

 perceptible by our organs of hearing and vision, then strain 

 your imagination to its cracking point, and you will still fail to 

 picture the wonderland in which the smallest of our fellow-, 

 creatures may be living, moving, and having their being. 



