THE TALK OF ANIMALS; 
[This is the title of an article from the London Telegraph, which is so well written, and is 
so interesting that we cannot deny ourselves the privilege of making liberal extracts from it. . ] — Ed. 
^"NATURALISTS have recently 
I been discussing the interest- 
I j f ing question whether or not 
I lg ) 1 Bees can talk with 
^ each other. Those 
best informed on the subject aje, we 
gather, inclined to regard it as per- 
fectly possible. Such a view would, 
perhaps, astonish many minds not 
familiar with these and others of the 
lower creatures by daily observation. 
Yet the more people live in close 
notice of animals and insects the less 
inclined they will feel to draw that 
very difficult line which divides 
instinct from reason, or to set any hard 
and fast limit to the wonders of 
Nature. In fact, the very word 
"lower" becomes sometimes an insult, 
a positive affront to the wonderful life 
about us, which even proud Man him- 
self has scarcely a right to offer. 
There could, for instance, be nothing 
well conceived humbler than the 
Earthworm. Until the illustrious 
Darwin took up the subject of that 
despised being no one comprehended 
the vastness of man's debt to this poor, 
ugly, trampled creature. The number- 
less millions of that obscure tribe, none 
the less, have created all the loam and 
all the arable land of the whole globe, 
passing through their bodies the fallen 
leaves and decaying vegetable matter; 
and by their single sphere of labor in 
this respect rendering cultivation and 
harvests possible. When we tread on 
that Worm we destroy an agricultural 
laborer of the most respectable class. 
To those eternal and widespread toils 
of the creeping friend of men we owe 
the woods, the meadows, and the 
flowers. This is, of course, only an 
example of the importance, not of the 
faculties of the lower creatures. 
Nevertheless even Worms communi- 
cate sufficiently to have and to observe 
their seasons of love ; and Bees are so 
much higher in the scale of life, and 
so richly gifted in all details of their 
work, and so sociable in their habits, 
that it would not be at all a safe thing 
to say they possess no means of inter- 
course. Certainly no skillful and 
watchful bee-master would ever ven- 
ture upon such an assertion. He 
knows very well how the sounds in 
the hive and those produced by indi- 
vidual Bees vary from time to time, 
and in a manner which appears to 
convey, occasionally at all events, 
mutual information. A Wasp or a 
strange Bee entering a hive without 
permission seems mighty quickly to 
hear something not very much to its 
advantage, and when two or three 
Bees have found a good source of 
honey, how on earth do all the others 
know which path to take through the 
trackless air, except by some friendly 
buzz or wing-hint? Now, the bee- 
masters tell us that there is surely one 
particular moment in the history of 
the hive when something very much 
like actual language appears to be 
obviously employed. It is when the 
young queen is nearly ready to move 
away. She begins to utter a series of 
faint, staccato, piping noises, quite 
different from her ordinary note, and 
just before she flies off this sound 
becomes altered to a low, delicate kind 
of whistle, as if emanating from some 
tiny fairy flute. How this small cry, 
or call, or signal, is produced nobody 
understands. The major portion of 
sounds in a hive is, of course, caused 
by the vibration more or less rapidly 
of the wings of the Bees. But whoever 
has examined the delicate machinery 
with which the Grass-hopper makes 
his chirp would not be surprised to 
find that the queen Bee had also some 
peculiar contrivance by which to 
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