ANTENNA. 



1. 57 



freely upon each other and also upon their articula- 

 tions with the head. Those joints or pieces vary 

 very considerably in number, and also in form. 

 Sometimes they are cylinders, and the whole of each 

 antenna is nearly of uniform thickness. Sometimes 

 they increase in thickness towards the points, and in 

 other cases they diminish. In some again, each 

 joint is swelled out in the middle, so that the antenna 

 appears like a chain of little balls. In other instances 

 again, they have projecting processes which give 

 them a comb-like appearance, and in others they are 

 beset with small bristles or with little feathery ap- 

 pendages. In short, their forms are so various that 

 a large volume would be requisite for giving even 

 the slightest account of them all ; and though such a 

 volume were written, it would be of no value, inas- 

 much as, not knowing the use of antennae in any one 

 of their forms, it is impossible even to guess at the 

 different uses of the differently formed ones. We 

 have already said that they are largely employed 

 for specific distinction ; and in the present state of 

 our knowledge they are of no farther importance as 

 a portion of the history of living creatures. 



They are sometimes popularly called " horns," 

 and also "feelers;" but the use of both these terms 

 is objectionable, as both of them tend to give a 

 wrong meaning ; while the. word antennae has the ad- 

 vantage of having no meaning at all, and is of course 

 the very best kind of name for any thing of the uses 

 of which we are ignorant. 



The projecting appendages to the heads of many 

 of the mollusca are called horns, and they have pro- 

 bably some uses similar to those of antennas ; but 

 they are retractile, and antennas are not. The notion 

 generally attached to horns, however, is that they 

 are in some way weapons of offence or defence, 

 purposes to which no antennae are applied or capable 

 of being applied ; and indeed, whatever may be the 

 real use of these organs, it is certainly not, in any 

 way, mechanical. 



The term "feelers" is still more objectionable than 

 " horns," because it involves a theory of the use of 

 the antennae, and a theory for which there is no 

 foundation whatever in nature. That theory of course 

 is, that they are orgaus of feeling, and that those 

 animals which have antennae examine and know 

 objects by means of them. 



There is a double error in this gratuitous theory : 

 in the first place, a direct faculty is given to the 

 antennae, which there are no means of proving that 

 thev possess ; and in the second place, it is assumed 

 that feeling is a direct and original means of knowing 

 external objects, which is a very doubtful, or, iu 

 truth, a very erroneous supposition, even in the case 

 of man, and in the case of other animals of course 

 still more perplexing. 



That sense, or faculty, or feeling in man, to which 

 the common writers on physiology usually give the 

 name of touch, and describe as residing in the papillae 

 of the skin, especially of the fingers and palms, is 

 not a simple sense, at least when we consider it as a 

 nifMiis by which the knowledge of external things, or 

 of what we call their tangible qualities, is acquired. 

 As a mere sense, it could communicate to us the 

 knowledge of nothing but a peculiar kind of feeling, 

 and the ascertaining of what that feeling was would 

 be a mental process, consequent to the feeling, but 

 not arising out of it or in any way dependent upon it 

 as a mere animal sensation. It this were not the 



case we should be able, of our animal nature alone, 

 and without the slightest effort or application of 

 mind, to feel ourselves into the perfect knowledge of 

 figure and magnitude, that is, of the whole science 

 of Geometry. Now so far is this from being the 

 case, that we may continue touching and fum- 

 bling at bodies of all sizes and forms for the whole 

 length of our lives, and not only so, but we may in 

 every case exercise the common act of thought which 

 is exercised by the ignorant about every thing they 

 handle, without ariving at the knowledge of a single 

 geometrical truth. But if our sense of touch, as we 

 call it, cannot convey to us a knowledge of the figure 

 and magnitude of that which we touch, it is difficult 

 to see what knowledge it can communicate. It may 

 be said that it communicates the knowledge of heat 

 and cold, of roughness and smoothness, and a few 

 other states or qualities of matter which we very er- 

 roneously ascribe to it. But when we come to analyse 

 them, even in the slightest manner, we find that the 

 knowledge of heat and cold, roughness and smooth- 

 ness, and all those other states and properties of bo- 

 dies of which we are in the every day habit of saying 

 we acquire a knowledge at once by touch, are, in 

 truth, not sensations of any kind, but the results of 

 mental comparisons, either of the state of a thing with 

 the part of the body with which the thing comes in 

 contact or comparisons of one thing with another. In 

 us therefore the sense which we call feeling or touch, 

 considered as a mere affection, or change of state (for 

 that is all which it amounts to) in the animal organ 

 really gives us no information whatever, until the in- 

 tellectual part of our system takes it up, and by 

 analogy, that is, by comparing it with our past ex- 

 periences, elaborates it into knowledge ; and if we 

 had not the intellectual system thus to take it up and 

 render it useful, the animal feeling would be a pro- 

 perty given in vain generally speaking, a source of 

 pain and torture to us, and therefore quite inconsistent 

 with that wisdom and goodness of which we find 

 the traces so visible in every part of nature. 



Now, even those who have a lingering desire to 

 take chimpansees and ourang outangs into the pale 

 of rational nature, never go so far as to bestow that 

 "inferior sort of reason," of which they are so chari- 

 table to their favourite beasts, upon a black-beetle or 

 a cabbage-butterfly. It is true that they who are 

 thus votive of the sort of demi-rationality, or whatever 

 other fraction it may be, do not thereby squander the 

 property of others ; because that which the}' give is 

 wholly of their own invention and making, and there- 

 fore they have a right to bestow it as they list ; and 

 it is probable that the showman, who exhibits the " in- 

 dustrious fleas'' for his bread, is just as ready to ascribe 

 intellect to them as the man who exhibits an elephant 

 for the same purpose, whether in a den or on a stage, 

 is to ascribe it to the beast of his choice. We laugh 

 at the recollection of the ancient Egyptians, and at 

 the accounts of those castes in India, who made or 

 make a sort of inferior divinities of animals without 

 much regard either to their sagacity or their other 

 good qualities. But truly the great majority of our 

 writers do the very same in almost every page of the 

 treatises on natural history. 



But to return to the apes and the insects, in order 

 to see clearly the absurdity of regarding antennae as 

 organs of feeling. The apes, and indeed all the ver- 

 tebrated, or, as we call them, the more perfect animals, 

 have no antenna; no organs appropriated for the 



