LANGUAGE, OR SIGN-MAKING.
Or, neglecting the unintentional and merely initiative signs as not, properly speaking, signs at all, every kind of intentional sign may be represented diagrammatically as in the illustration opposite.
Now, thus far we have been dealing with matters of fact concerning which I do not think there can be any question. That is to say, no one can deny any of the statements which this schema serves to express; a difference of opinion can only arise when it is asked whether the sundry faculties (or cases) presented by the schema are developmentally continuous with one another. To this topic, therefore, we shall now address ourselves.
First let it be observed that there can be no dispute about one point, namely, that all the faculties or cases presented by the schema, with the single exception of the last (No. 7), are common to animals and men. Therefore we may begin by taking as beyond the reach of question the important fact that animals do present, in an unmistakable manner, a germ of the sign-making faculty. But this fact is so important in its relation to our subject, that I shall here pause to consider the modes and degrees in which the faculty is exhibited by animals.
Huber says that when one wasp finds a store of honey, “it returns to the nest and brings off in a short time a hundred other wasps;” and this statement is confirmed by Dujardin. Again, the very able observer, F. Müller, writes, in one of his letters to Mr. Darwin, that he observed a queen bee depositing her eggs in a nest of 47 cells. In the process she overlooked four of the cells, and when she had filled the other 43, supposing her work to have been completed, prepared to retire. “But as she had overlooked the four cells of the new comb, the workers ran impatiently from this part to the queen, pushing her in an odd manner with their heads, as they did also the other workers they met with. In consequence, the queen began again to go round on the two older combs; but, as she did not find any cell wanting an egg, she tried to descend, yet everywhere she was pushed back by the workers. This contest lasted rather a long while, till the queen escaped without having completed her work. Thus the workers knew how to advise the queen that something was yet to be done; but they knew not how to show her where it had to be done.”
According to De Fravière, Landois, and some other observers, bees have a number of different notes, or tones, whereby they communicate information to one another;[59] but there seems to be little doubt that the means chiefly employed are gestures made with the antennæ. For example, Huber divided a hive into two chambers by means of a partition: great excitement prevailed in the half of the hive deprived of the queen, and the bees set to work to build royal cells for the creation of a new queen. Huber then divided a hive in exactly the same manner, with the difference only that the screen, or partition, was made of trellis work, through the openings of which the bees on either side could pass their antennæ. Under these circumstances the bees in the queenless half of the hive exhibited no disturbance, nor did they construct any royal cells: the bees in the other, or separated, half of the hive were able to inform them that the queen was safe.