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The Senses of the Lower Animals . 
[July, 
track of modifications of the faculty of touch or feeling 
which may be substantially to us unknown senses. Our 
power of touch refers mainly to solid bodies ; we can decide 
whether they are moist or dry, hot or cold, rough or smooth, 
&c., and we can discriminate between solids and liquids. 
But we have no organ that informs us of the state of the 
atmosphere, except in as far as we perceive its temperature 
by the whole surface of our bodies. It is far from impro- 
bable that some of the organs of inserts may give them 
information of the condition of the atmosphere — baroscopic, 
hygroscopic, or eledtroscopic. This is the more likely since 
some of the parts which have been suggested as the seats of 
touch are, in multitudes of cases, exceedingly ill-adapted 
for being applied to the examination of solid bodies. The 
antennae are often too short and too sparingly mobile. 
It is plain that the more numerous and complete the data 
laid before us, the easier does the solution of any problem 
become. If, then, certain of the lower animals possess 
more delicate, and possibly more numerous senses, than do 
we, they are in a position to acquire, by direct perception, 
knowledge which we can only gain by trains of indudlive 
reasoning and by the use of instruments of precision. Even 
yet Natural History is haunted by a phantom known as 
“ Instindl,” which is invoked in every case of difficulty, just 
as was phlogiston by the chemists of the last century, and 
which is invested, pro re natd, with attributes not always the 
most conceivable or the most mutually consistent.* But 
very probably those instances of supposed instinct which 
are not resolvable into hereditary habit may be traced to 
the simple following of the guidance of senses more acute 
than our own. Thus we are told that certain birds, beasts, 
and insedls have an instinctive foreknowledge of coming 
storms and of other meteorological changes ; that migratory 
birds leave us when the weather is still warm and sunny, 
and the inserts upon which they feed are still plentiful ; 
that wild geese, fieldfares, stormcocks, &c., arrive earlier 
than usual on our shores, not because unusual cold has 
already set in at their ordinary resorts, but because it is 
going to do ; that the bees contract the inlet into their hive 
in proportion to the degree of cold which is about to prevail, 
&c. These observations, in so far as they are really founded 
* Our great objection to “ instindt ” is that it is too often a word hiding 
ignorance under the veil of pretended knowledge. There are in Biology un- 
solved questions in abundance, some of which are possibly beyond the scope 
of the human intellect. But in such cases, instead of talking about “ instind,” 
let us frankly confess that we do not know. 
