204 INTELLIGENCE IN INSECTS 



we have intelligent behavior rising to a level to which some 

 would apply the term rational. For the act may be held to 

 afford evidence of the perception of the relation of the means 

 employed to an end to be attained, and some general con- 

 ception of purpose." Truly a "tool using animal!" But 

 in estimating the psychic aspect of the performance we 

 must bear in mind that the act is one which borders closely 

 upon the normal instinctive behavior of the insect. The 

 seizure of pebbles in the mandibles and the packing in of 

 dirt are parts of the instinctive process of filling up the hole. 

 The wasp combines two features of its hole-filling instinct in 

 a rather unusual way. Does she really perceive the relation 

 of means to end? I am not so sure that she does. 



Many readers who peruse this chapter will miss the 

 wonderful accounts of insect ingenuity which they may 

 have expected to find. The literature of insect behavior 

 contains these in abundance. Run through the files of 

 Nature, Science Gossip, Der Zoologische Garten, La Nature, 

 The Zoologist, the older numbers of the Annals and Magazine 

 of Natural History, and The American Naturalist, the 

 various entomological journals, and works of travellers 

 w r ith a leaning toward natural history; and peruse the many 

 volumes that have been written on the instincts and intelli- 

 gence and reasoning power of animals, and you will encounter 

 an enormous mass of material, some of it carefully recorded, 

 much of it not, more of it vitiated by anthropomorphic 

 interpretation which one cannot help feeling has biased the 

 observer in his account of the facts, but the data that can be 

 employed in drawing conclusions regarding the degree of 

 intelligence shown by the forms observed is disappointingly 

 small. Animals are observed overcoming obstacles or meet- 

 ing unusual situations, and the occurrence is straightway 

 recorded as an illustration of sagacity, something for which 



