176 OTHEK ANIMALS 



the capacity of the individual. The whole point is that 

 intelligence and instinct mix in the same creature, and 

 that Fabre was wrong in concluding so dogmatically that 

 little-brained insects, in contradistinction to the big- 

 brained birds and mammals, are governed solely by 

 instinct. One other point. Even where an action is tx- 

 clusively instinctive, it cannot by any manner of means be 

 explained as a physiological mechanism. In the first 

 place, its origin as a variation is derived from the inborn 

 creative power of the organism, which, so to speak, 

 expresses an implicit idea ; it is not fortuitous , but orderly 

 and purposive, in the second, and instinct in full working 

 trim is (to quote Lloyd Morgan) ' ' organic behaviour 

 suffused with awareness," in the third. 



ANTS AND LIGHT 



On p. 743 of the Spectator of May 20, in an article on 

 " Substitute Senses," reference is made to the objection 

 ants have to light, and their efforts to exclude it from 

 their dwellings. That heat also is not desired by them 

 the following circumstances seem to show, and the story 

 may be deemed by you as suitable for your columns. Find- 

 ing that a small piece of a certain plant (Physalis) which I 

 had planted no sooner began to bud near the ground than 

 it was eaten off by slugs, I inverted a stemless wineglass 

 over the same, and as it happened, it had been planted 

 over an ants' colony. In a few days I found the inside 

 of the glass lined with moist earth, with some ants also 

 inside the glass, and I concluded that the glass had made 

 the ground too hot over the ants' dominion, as it was 

 in a very sunny part of the garden. Whatever their 

 reasons for doing this, it seems to me one more fragment 

 of evidence of their high-developed mental functions. 



