344 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



are not nearly so highly specialised or differentiated, and it is 

 extremely prohahle that they are in many instances nearly 

 allied to, or combined with, the faculties of touch." 



To claim the sense of hearing for insects after admissions 

 like these is indefensible. Let us look a little at the anatomy 

 of an insect. It is enclosed in a kind of shell. We wear our 

 skeleton internally ; the insect wears its externally. Protection 

 against injury is not the only thing aimed at under this 

 arrangement. Take a living Msclina grandis by the wings and 

 turn it upside down. You will see, with the aid of a lens, one 

 of the most delicate mechanisms, suggesting respiration and 

 circulation, close to the thorax, and exposed to injury every 

 time the fly settles on a hedge. The dragonfly wears his shell 

 dorsally and laterally — ^just where there seems least risk of 

 injury. And here and there, as in other insects, this shell is 

 studded with minute hairs, which may also " collect notices 

 from the atmosphere, pulses and vibrations." To sum up : 

 there may be a great deal in connection with this horny shell 

 not dreamt of in our philosophy. 



He who would wander in the paths of atrophy and develop- 

 ment must start with a stock of faith. I do not point to this as a 

 fault, but a fact. For humanity can hardly stir without faith. 

 Leaving the era before the common cell of protoplasm as pre- 

 historic, we arrive at a general, if momentary, agreement upon 

 the chronological origin of insects and vertebrates. The insects 

 came flrst. And so " our cerebral hemispheres are but modifica- 

 tions of the supra-oesophageal ganglia of a scorpion, while our 

 eyes and nose are the direct descendants of its eyes and olfactory 

 organs." True, this explanation *' differs from all others," but 

 that is as nothing — and it is present-day. But at this the lay- 

 man definitely revolts. Neither will he have it that there is a 

 " residual reptilian influence " in the practice of hissiug bad 

 plays; or that when we yawn ''we are trying to use gills 

 which have been closed nobody knows how long." He asserts, 

 "If the unscientific person read much of this sort of thing 

 without the proper correctives, and looked at the freaks and 

 perversities of evolution without looking still more at its great 

 sanities, he might believe that Nature made her arrangements 

 chiefly for some time ago, and that her later children have to 

 put up accordingly with a mortifyingly large proportion of 

 second-hand and misfitting instincts." Personally, by prefer- 

 ence, and without fear or favour, my faith lies in the story of 

 Creation. Nothing there must be upset, save on the strictest 

 lines of reciprocity. Quid pro quo ! 



To turn again upon the additional sense in insects is like 

 slaying the slain. Mr. Marshall asks {ante, p. 48), " Many insects, 

 such as bees, ants, &c., possess a definite and fixed abode, from 

 which they are in the habit of wandering, sometimes for con- 



