1897. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



83 



comb honey and cut it all up fine, and stir it Into the boiler of 

 syrup. Then at some stage they add tartaric acid to Ifeep It 

 from granulating (I am told). They start out In the morning 

 with the syrup in a deep milk-can, with a long-handled pint 

 dipper, and represent themselves as living in the country and 

 as having " strained honey " of their own production to sell ! 

 They sold, on an average, in Waterloo, where I first heard of 

 them, from 40 to 50 pounds a day, at 12K cents per pound. 

 They were selling the same in Davenport, when I was there. 

 I went into a grocery house in Rock Island, III., and saw 

 quite a lot of glasses set up in a conspicuous place, markt 

 "Honey.'' In some of them you could see a little piece of 

 comb honey, and some none. Some of them were labeled. I 

 askt the clerk if they sold much of it, and he said they had 

 disposed of quite a good deal. It was not all labeled anything 

 more than the word "Honey," but I pickt out one labeled as 

 follows: "Pure California white clover strained honey; 

 Franklin McVeagh, Chicago, 111." You see I was curious to 

 know just how California white clover honey tasted, and I 

 must say that it does not have any of the flavor of the white 

 clover honey east of the Rockies, and I am afraid that any 

 one that buys it will " go back on " California honey — espe- 

 cially " white clover honey." 



Riverside Co., Calif., Dec. 24. 



[It there is one subject above all others that needs atten- 

 tion just now, it is that of honey-adulteration. We must have 

 a national pure food law enacted mighty soon, or the business 

 of pure honey production will be ruined forever. The shame- 

 less adulterators are constantly at work, and will so continue 

 until compelled to stop by the enforcement of a rigid anti- 

 adulteration law. The United States Bee-Keepers' Union has 

 a big job ahead of it. It will require the uniud efforts and 

 funds of all bee-keepers to win in this fight. But it is well 

 worth undertaking — in fact, bee-keepers cannot afford to sub- 

 mit longer without soon finding their occupation gone. 

 What are you going to do about it? — Editor.] 



% 



Instinct or Reason in Insects — Which ? 



BV PKOF. A. J. COOK. 



Before the publication of Darwin's great book on the "Or- 

 igin of Species," and prior to the dawn of the new light with 

 which it illuminated all nature, it was almost universally be- 

 lieved, and as generally taught, that only man thought, 

 planned, and reasoned — all the lower animals were governed 

 by instinct. While some may have doubted regarding the ac- 

 tions of the higher vertebrate animals, no one thought it at all 

 a question that the moving cause in the life-habits and econo- 

 my of all invertebrate animals was instinct. It was taught in 

 our natural history literature that the bird built its first nest 

 with the same exactitude and in the same style that it built all 

 its subsequent nests. Naturalists were even more sure that 

 each species of ant, bee, or moth, was a sort of animated au- 

 tomaton, that always ran out Its little round of life in precisely 

 the same manner as all its ancestry had done before it. It 

 was wound up at birth ; and simply lived to unwind just as all 

 similar forms have run down in all the long past. 



Among the many good fruits that came from Darwin's 

 new view of creation, was the huge interrogation point that It 

 placed after this whole idea of instinct. Men wondered if it 

 were true that animals below man were mere automatons. 

 Animal psychology was brought into existence and the views 

 held regarding the springs to action in the lower realms of life 

 were soon reconstructed. Men learned that reason and intel- 

 ligence, in the lower life forms, must be invoked to explain the 

 phenomena that were brought to light by the deeper insight 

 into animal habits and actions. Even a show of ethics, often 

 however with dimmest coloring, was thought to be discovered 

 by a close observation of the life-habits even of insect life. The 

 great Romanes found that his dog could be taught to 

 count ; and the astounding performances of the ant-colony, 

 kept and studied in his library by Sir John Lubbock in the in- 

 tervals of his arduous Parliamentary labors, had led all read- 

 ers of his facinating " Ants, Bees, and Wasps " to marvel at 

 the wondrous performances of these highest of hexapodous 

 animals. 



In the study of insects, we often discover methods of ac- 

 tion that demonstrate not only mental traits of no mean char- 

 acter, but ways that strongly simulate moral actions. We al- 

 so see evidence of sense perception that surpasses anything 

 known to human experience. It is my purpose in what fol- 

 lows to call attention to some of these characteristics. 



The coddling-moth, parent of the apple-worm, which lat- 

 ter pest is familiar to all lovers of the apple everywhere 

 throughout our country, is not high in the scale of insect life ; 

 yet it evinces no slight possession of business sense, and even 

 observes one of the Ten Commandments. This little grey 

 moth, hid by its very color as It rests by day on the russet 

 bark of the apple-tree, flits forth at the dawn of nightfall, to 

 drop her three or more score of eggs where her babycaterpil- 

 lars may find, even at birth, a full larder of most toothsome 

 viands. The young forming fruit is now straight from the 

 stem, with Its calyx-basin uppermost. The persistent calyx- 

 leaves seem like so many protecting stakes about this shallow 

 basin. All below is smooth and precipitous. Any baby cater- 

 pillar would be safe in the wind-rockt cradle — the calyx-basin; 

 safer because of the green calyx-leaves, which would gird it 

 round and hold it in. The eggs might be washt off by rain or 

 pickt up by bird or egg-loving insect, except that they were 

 lodged in this same protecting basin, and hid by the same 

 calyx-leaves. Even little Moses was not better concealed or 

 more skillfully protected. Any such action by man, as the 

 placing of these eggs, so warily and skillfully, would be prais- 

 ed as a fine example of wisdom and caution. But this is not 

 all ! As the little mother-moth peers into the calyx-cup to see 

 if all is safe for the egg, she may perchance discover by sight 

 of an egg, wee caterpillar, or burrow, showing that the little 

 larva had already entered the fruit — that some sister had al- 

 ready pre-empted that egg-depository. She lays no eggs, but 

 at once flits away to other fruit. She says in the most elo- 

 quent language — action: "I will not covet the wee fruit mor- 

 sel, of my neighbor's little one, for my own yet unhatcht;I 

 will respect its rights." 



The plum curculio is a weevil or snout-beetle. The wee- 

 vils are such beetles as have their heads prolonged into a snout 

 or rostrum. At the end of this beak are their sharp jaws. 

 The plum curculio wishes to place her eggs on or about the 

 plum, so that baby curculio may enter and feed on the luscious 

 plum pulp. Here there is no calyx-cup with a protecting 

 crown of sepals — all is smooth, glistening rind. If she place 

 her egg on the smooth plum peal, rain will wash it far from 

 its base of supplies, or some hungry bird may snap it up. If 

 she bore into the flesh of the growing fruit, the very growth 

 of the plum will crush the delicate egg. She provides against 

 either catastrophe, by inserting her beak and cutting a cres- 

 cent, which hangs by the peel at one side. And into this she 

 places the precious egg. Thus growth of the plum is stopt, 

 and danger of the egg being crusht prevented ; the egg is 

 firmly held, and is concealed from sharpest eyes of bird or in- 

 sect. Such provision for safety of offspring we praise and ad- 

 mire, as marks of intelligence and civilization among our own 

 kind ; why withhold a similar meed of praise to the little, 

 astute curculio ? 



In an article written for "Student Life" last year, I 

 showed how the yucca-moth rolls up pollen and places it on 

 the stigma of the flower, with no purpose so far as we can dis- 

 cover, except to fructify the blossom. If the flower was not 

 thus artificially pollinated, no seed would develop, and the lar- 

 va of the yucca-moth would starve. Here we have forethought 

 and skill that is only matcht by that of the Itith century man. 



We welcome the frugal, industrious, producing foreigner 

 to America. We are beginning to consider seriously an inter- 

 dict of the immigration to our land of all others. The bees 

 were long our superiors in the discovery of this wise principle 

 of political economy. Woe betide the bee whose temerity leads 

 it to attempt an entrance into the hive of another colony, ex- 

 cept it carry with it a full load of honey. In such case the 

 other bees at once attack it, and usually death is the price of 

 its venture. If, on the other hand, it enter fully stockt with 

 provisions, it receives a hearty welcome. 



The death rate in our cities is becoming greatly les- 

 sened in these last few years. Tbe major reason is greater 

 cleanliness. Decaying matter is burned or buried. Bees taught 

 us this lesson, and have practiced beyond our latest and best 

 performance for ages. Suppose a great bumble-bee attempts 

 to pilfer from an open hive ; the bees pounce upon him, and 

 he is soon a corpse. They then lay hold of him, and attempt 

 to drag him forth from the hive. If the entrance is too small, 

 they will still tug away, till they have removed every vestige 

 of hair. What then ? They cannot remove it, and they cannot 

 brook the presence of filth ; so with their bee-glue they bury 

 the offending corpse. I have also found the carcass of a 

 mouse similarly entombed in this same kind of an hermetic 

 sepulchre. Solomon might have said : " Go to the bee, thou 

 sufferer, and learn of her, sanitary wisdom." 



The ants as the highest of insects, furnish many aud won- 

 drous examples of wisdom, skill. Intelligence and thought. 

 Ants have long held slaves, have long kept domesticated ani- 

 mals — their milch cows — to minister to their wants. They 



