Mr. Belt
in "The Naturalist in Nicaragua"), may be said to be elevated above
the common instincts of the race. Dr. Henry Maudsley has also well
summed up the relationship of the acts of these insects to the acts of
higher forms, and to new adaptations when he says: "I do not say that
the ant and the bee are entirely destitute of any power of adaptation
to new experiences in their lives--that they are, in fact, purely
organized machines, acting always with unvarying regularity; it would
appear, indeed, from close observation, that these creatures do
sometimes discover in their actions traces of a sensibility to strange
experiences, and of corresponding adaptations of movements. We cannot,
moreover, conceive how the remarkable instincts which they manifest
can have been acquired originally, except by virtue of some such
power. But the power in them now is evidently of a rudimentary kind,
and must remain so while they have not those higher nerve-centres in
which the sensations are combined into ideas, and perceptions of the
relations of things are acquired. Granting, however, that the bee or
ant has these traces of adaptive action, it must be allowed that they
are truly rudiments of functions, which in the supreme nerve-centres
we designate as reason and volition. Such a confession might be a
trouble to a metaphysical physiologist, who would thereupon find it
necessary to place a metaphysical entity behind the so-called
instincts of the bee, but can be no trouble to the inductive
physiologist--he simply recognizes an illustration of a physiological
diffusion of properties, and of the physical conditions of primitive
volition, and traces in the evolution of mind and its organs, as in
the evolution of other functions and their organs, a progressive
specialization and increasing complexity."

The recently published experiments of Sir John Lubbock show that ants
under certain circumstances are both stupid and devoid of any
intelligent comprehension in the way of surmounting difficulties; but
this distinguished observer has also shown that as regards
communication between ants, and in the regulation of the ordinary
circumstances of their lives, these insects evince a high degree of
intelligence, and exhibit instincts of a very highly developed kind.
Still, making every allowance for the development of extraordinary
mental power in some species of ants, there can be little doubt of the
purely automatic beginnings and nature of