"Sir John Lubbock's book on 'Ants, Bees, and Wasps' is mainly devoted to the crawlers, and not the fliers, though he has some observations upon honey-bees and more interesting ones upon the unpopular wasp, which he fondly deems to be capable of gratitude. Darwin made a strong case for the monkeys, but Lubbock may yet make us out to be, as Irishmen say, 'The sons of our ants.' For he begins his entertaining book thus: 'The anthropoid apes no doubt approach nearer to man in bodily structure than do any other animals, but, when we consider the habits of ants, their large communities and elaborate habitations, their roadways, their possession of domestic animals, and, even in some cases, of slaves, it must be admitted that they have a fair claim to rank next to man in the scale of intelligence.'"—Springfield Republican.
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] Letters may be addressed to me directly at 18 Cornwall Terrace, Regent's Park, London, N W.
[2] Of course it may be said that we have no evidence of prompting in either case; but this is the side issue which concerns the general relation of body and mind, and has nothing to do with the guarantee of inferring the presence of mind in particular cases.
[3] I.e., ancestral as well as individual. If the race had not always had occasion to close the eyelids to protect the eyes, it is certain that the young child would not so quickly learn to do so in virtue of its own individual experience alone; and as the action cannot be attributed to any process of conscious inference, it is not rational; but we have seen that it is not originally reflex; therefore it is instinctive.
[4] Psychological Researches, p. 187.
[5] H. J. Carter, F.R.S., Annals of Natural History, 3rd Series, 1863, pp. 45-6.
[6] For an account of the natural movements of the Medusæ and the effects of stimulation upon them, see Croonian Lecture in Phil. Trans. 1875, and also Phil. Trans. 1877 and 1879.