GENERAL ADAPTIVENESS. 309 



porary scaffolding (Watson), just as man does, and only in 

 mi urgency when it is required. 



On the other hand, some of the higher animals, per- 

 ceiving man's object, either prevent his repairs for instance, 

 of fences or destroy them as rapidly as they are made. There 

 is sometimes systematic undoing of his work for instance, 

 in trap making and setting (Houzeau). 



Many of the arrangements connected with the collection, 

 preservation, and use of food illustrate a thoughtful adapta- 

 tion of means to ends an adaptation frequently the result 

 of repeated experiment and as frequent failure. As concerns 

 the gathering of food, various insects perforate the corollas 

 of flowers in order expeditiously to get at the honey they 

 contain. In the case of bees with certain ericas or Cape 

 heaths in our greenhouses, the tubular corolla c being too 

 long and narrow for admitting the body, and too deep for 

 the proboscis to reach the base, where the honey is placed, 

 they pierce the tube of the corolla from the exterior, and 

 thus procure the honey with ease' (Moore). Bees make a 

 hole at the base of the corolla of Antirrhinum majus in order 

 to get at the honey without entering the tube of the flower 

 (Mrs. Plarr), and certain honey bees do the same in the 

 French bean and scarlet-runner (Lubbock). 



The same boring of holes in flower-tubes by humble bees 

 has been noticed in America by Meehan ; and what is of 

 greater interest, as illustrating how ready animals even far 

 down in the zoological scale are to take advantage of ready- 

 made means to ends, the hive bee uses the orifices so made by 

 the humble bee in nectar extraction from flowers (Darwin). 

 The glutton sometimes contrives to secure the bait, without 

 itself being entrapped, by undermining, attacking from be- 

 hind, or other means of destroying the action of the trap or 

 of detaching the bait. The black bear breaks off branches 

 from trees, and throws them on the ground in order to 

 collect at leisure the nuts they bear, sometimes partially 

 gnawing a branch, as a man would perhaps saw it, for its 

 easier breakage (Houzeau). The mother black bear of 

 North America hauls or pushes aside timber logs in order 

 that its cubs may obtain the grubs or larvae that harbour 



VOL. I. BE 



