CHAPTER XXVIII. 



BEETLE INTELLECT. 



FROM the spiders, which depart so far in their bodily 

 organisation from the insect type proper, that they are 

 set aside in a special class of the articulate animals 

 under the name of Arachnida, let us turn back to a group 

 which represents this type in its highest perfection or de- 

 velopment the universally known, and almost inconceivably 

 various in form, beetles or Coleopterce. If only the represen- 

 tatives of different species in the countless collections of 

 this specially beloved object of collectors were reckoned up, 

 they would mount to far over a hundred thousand ; and 

 were we to judge by the interest which these creatures 

 exercise over so many people we should have to expect 

 something very special from them for the object of this 

 work. But in reality, both as to their mechanical ability 

 and as to their other intellectual capacities, they stand far, 

 far behind the hitherto studied representatives of the arti- 

 culate animals, although a more exact observation of their 

 habits and action than we as yet possess would here also, 

 without doubt, bring to light in some species and genera 

 a perhaps hitherto not suspected intellectual capacity. 

 Debey maintains (" Beitrage zur Lebens und Entwicklungs 

 Geschichte der Riisselkttfer aus der Zunft der Attelabiden^ 

 Bonn, 1846, and quoted by Perty, loc. cit., p. 300,) that the 

 so-called funnel-spinner, Khynchites betulce, possesses the high- 

 est instinct among beetles, and that it with other Attelabides 

 should be placed near, if not above, the honey-bee and the 

 ant. In general, however, such a judgment is doubtless in- 

 applicable to the great order of the beetles, or beetle-like 

 insects. Their helplessness, their clumsy ways, their manner 

 of flight and work, their want of ordered social life, and 

 similar facts, point to the lower intellectual grade which they 

 take among their allies, and they may be described as among 



