UNTAUGHT WISDOM 



some object, it struggles to loosen it, and, having 

 done so, places it on its shell. It wants the protec- 

 tion the anemone affords it. At least that is what the 

 biologists say. Now whose cat or dog or horse does 

 anything half as wonderful as that? And yet shall 

 we believe that this all but brainless crab possesses 

 the faculty of reason? 



Many incidents might be cited from insect life that 

 are quite as wonderful. The ants and termites do 

 things that seem to imply an unmistakable faculty 

 of reason, at the same time that they do things or 

 allow things that seem almost idiotic, as when a 

 large species of ant allows the little thief ant to live 

 in its nests and devour its eggs or larvae and never 

 seems to know what is going on. But take the case 

 of the ichneumon-fly, which lays its eggs on or 

 near some caterpillar or beetle grub. When the eggs 

 hatch, the young ichneumon burrows into the body 

 of its host, feeding on its tissues, but not attacking 

 such organs as the heart or the nervous ganglia. 

 Why not? Because injury to these organs " might 

 mean immediate death to the host," and conse- 

 quently death to the young ichneumon. Shall we 

 say, then, that this hungry "milk-nosed maggot" 

 reasons? Something reasons, or has reasoned in 

 this case, but is it the maggot? 



The same kind of reasoning power appears to be 

 possessed by some trees and plants. Behold the 

 candelabra tree in South America as described 

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