246 NASCENT REASON, EMOTION, 



stated (p. ■205), however, the same ohserver found that 

 neither Bees, Wasps, nor Ants, seemed to take the least 

 notice of the most varied sounds produced in their vicinity. 

 These investigations of Sir John Lubbock are the best 

 that have ever been made to really test, by means of 

 carefully devised experiments, the adaptive intelligence of 

 the Social Insects, whose Instinctive Acts are so compli- 

 cated and marvellous, and as far as they have yet gone 

 they suffice to show us the very scanty grounds that exist 

 for crediting them with anything like Eeason. His ex- 

 periments have revealed, in the great majority of cases, 

 a very surprising lack of Eeason, when even the slightest 

 departure from their customary actions was alone need- 

 ful, in order that these Insects — the most intelligent of 

 their class — might adapt themselves to certain purposely- 

 altered conditions in their environment. 



(3.) The next corollary is the converse of that which 

 has just been illustrated. It is this, — The higher the 

 development of the Brain in those organisms which perform 

 any of the more complex Instinctive Actions, the more 

 frequently will acts of ' Reason ' appear to intervene in 

 their accidental relations with unfamiliar phenomena out- 

 side the range of their ordinary instinctive experiences. 



Next to those of Insects, the instincts of Birds are, 

 perhaps, the most remarkable, and as the Brain and 

 Nervous System generally is so much more highly deve- 

 loped in Birds than it is in Insects, we ought, in accordance 

 with the corollary above mentioned, to find in the former 

 a much greater liberty and choice of action, together with 

 a more decided and more frequent exercise of the lower 

 modes of Reason, Emotion, Imagination, and Volition 

 than is to be met with among the latter.* 



*It is not meant for the reader to infer that the distinct manifesta* 



