344 LEISURE-TIME STUDIES. 



Appealing to the most recent observations on ants, we 

 may find evidence of the truth of Dr. Carpenter's statements, 

 whilst at the same time we may also detect instances of the 

 development of higher powers which are hardly to be classed 

 as " automatic," and which, in certain species (as in the 

 Etitons, charmingly described by Mr. Belt in "The 'Natur- 

 alist in Nicaragua "), may be said to be elevated above the 

 common instincts of the race. Dr. Henry Maudsley has 

 also well summed up the relationship of the acts of these 

 insects to the acts of higher forms, and to new adaptations 

 when he says : " I do not say that the ant and the bee are 

 entirely destitute of any power of adaptation to new ex- 

 periences in their lives, that they are, in fact, purely 

 organised machines, acting always with unvarying regularity; 

 it would appear, indeed, from close observation, that these 

 creatures do sometimes discover in their actions traces of 

 a sensibility to strange experiences, and of corresponding 

 adaptation of movements. We cannot, moreover, conceive 

 how the remarkable instincts which they manifest can have 

 been acquired originally, except by virtue of some such 

 power. But the power in them now is evidently of a rudi- 

 mentary kind, and must remain so while they have not 

 those higher nerve-centres in which the sensations are com- 

 bined into ideas, and perceptions of the relations of things 

 are acquired. Granting, however, that the bee or ant has 

 these traces of adaptive action, it must be allowed that they 

 are truly rudiments of functions, which in the supreme 

 nerve-centres we designate as reason and volition. Such a 

 confession might be a trouble to a metaphysical physiologist, 

 who would thereupon find it necessary to place a meta- 

 physical entity behind the so-called instincts of the bee; 

 but can be no trouble to the inductive physiologist, he 

 simply recognises an illustration of a physiological diffusion 

 of properties, and of the physical conditions of primitive 

 volition, and traces in the evolution of mind and its organs, 

 as in the evolution of other functions and their organs, a 

 progressive specialisation and increasing complexity." 



