340 . General Notes. 
and almost mechanically sets to work to form a new conception 
out of the real sensations which are then presented to conscious 
ness, and discards the old conception which it had made outol 
place occasionally in our waking hours, when, for example, in hear- 
ing a sudden noise, we exclaim, “I cannot understand that! 
sensation out of which to make as conception. But being fully 
awake, the understanding of the man does not go on to invent 
sensations, but it waits and makes no attempt to think the noise 
until it receives sufficient real sensations out of which to make a 
conception. 
As for example, the noise is heard as the man is walking ina 
forest, and not having sufficient sensations for a conception, he 
turns around and looks and sees a man with a gun smoking oe 
tree just fallen or a wagon, and thus having with his eyes a" 
other sensations his understanding is enabled out of the material 
gathered to make an intelligent conception. —T. B. Stork. 
Fritz MÜLLER on THE INHERITANCE OF TRADITIONS AMON 
SociaL Insects.—In a letter to Mature, Fritz Miller, referring t0 
Mr. C. Lloyd Morgan's excellent paper on animal intelligent 
(Nature, vol. XXVI., p. 523), quotes from him as follows: 
brute has to be contented with the experience he inherits or indi 
vidually acquires. Man, through language, spoken or WRT) 
profits by the experience of his fellows. Even the most saute | 
tribe has traditions extending back to the father’s father. May 
Müller then adds: “ As is well known, the stingless honeybees 
[Mah 
there not be, in social animals also, traditions from generation t0 z 
generation, certain habits prevailing in certain communities 1 
consequence neither of inherited instincts nor of individual n 
rience, but simply because the young ones imitate what they 
(Melipona and Trigona) build horizontal combs consisting pe i 
single layer of celis, which, if there is plenty of space, 0) 
same distance from the first built central one. Now, on _— 
4, 1874, I met with a nest of a small Trigona (Abelha pee of 
1875), when, perhaps, not a single bee survived of those 7 yet 
had | 
_come from the canella-tree; but notwithstanding ne 
continued to build irregular combs, while quite regular ones 
put fd several other communities of the same species, W 
ave had. 
nicht 
