No. 378.]| REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 439 
inconvenience, and using their hands to force the ends of large 
earthworms into their mouths. They could be made to take meat 
and even carrion held on a needle before them. In this way the 
captive frogs were made much more fat and larger than those of the 
same ages outside. 
Such overfed creatures developed a second period of sexual excite- 
ment in midsummer, but this led merely to certain males grasping 
the females for a short period. 
Observations made in the neighborhood of Zofingen, Switzerland, 
and upon a frog not found here, may have no direct bearing upon the 
life history of our own frogs, but they indicate lines for imitation. 
With increasing interest in aquaria and gardens, both botanical and 
zoological, we may hope for more natural history work of this kind, 
and for the filling up of immense gaps in our knowledge concerning 
the length of life and rate of growth of animals. kai 
Psychical Qualities of Ants and Bees.'— The question as to 
whether or not we may ascribe psychical qualities to ants and bees 
is discussed by Albrecht Bethe in a recent issue of Pflügers 
Archiv, 
In his introduction the author points out the danger of an investi- 
gator’s personality being read into the subject investigated, and also 
danger of the use of such words as carry with them meanings not 
warranted by the facts; men see, but all we know about bees is that 
they are influenced by light, and it would be unscientific to say they 
do anything so highly psychical as seeing until it is proved. It is 
absolutely impossible to find words which are always consistent with 
this idea, but the endeavor has been made to do so as far as 
possible. 
The polymorphic colonies of bees and ants are pointed out as 
giving direct evidence against the Lamarckian principle of the inheri- 
tance of acquired characters. This polymorphism, Bethe believes, is 
completely explained through congenital diversity and natural selec- 
tion, as is true also for all purposeful reflexes. 
‘It is well in reading the paper to bear in mind the author’s 
distinction between reflexes and instincts. “Only those actions can 
be designated instinctive in which an animal, which can be proved to 
possess psychical qualities, follows an. inherited impulse without a 
1 Albrecht Bethe, Dürfen wir den Ameisen und Bienen psychische Qualitäten 
wa N Archiv f. d. Ges. Phys. vol. lxx, Pts. i, ii, pp. 15-100, January, 
