INSECT CONVERSATION.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3697, 21 May 1883, Page 4

INSECT CONVERSATION.

The popular scientists have shown us that insects arc vastly our tmpeviors in

scA'eral respects. Suppose, for instance, that two men could meet in the street, and, by touching each other's hands for a second, the one could inform the other where the best lunch in toAvn is to be found, what there is and hoAv much of it, what kind of Avaiters there are and whether the barkeeper turns round or not when the drinks are poured out, how immense would be their advantage over other men. And yet this is no more than is done thousands of times a clay by the ants when they meet each other in" their little roads. Men have a sort of sign language but it conveys nothing in comparison to the extended information the ants are probably able to impart by means of their antenme. When the autcnnie are cut off they lose the power of antspeech. When flies are deprived of their feelers they cease to take any interest in decayed vegetables, even of the rankest flavor; and bees Avheu similarly treated will attempt to feed upon offal as readily as upon honey. If Darwin's hypothesis be correct, we have probably in the course of development from nomads lost as much or more than avc have gained, since wo find that insects and even the lower animals arc much more gifted in acuteness of sense than ourselves. Most if not all the lower animals seem to have some means of communicating information to each other, though exactly lioav much they tell is uncertain. Any housekeeper, however, is convinced that they do tell something, since she knows that if one ant is seen in her sugar barrel there will be 10,000 more before the next morning, though how the information is conveyed is a secret. —St. Louis Globe-Democrat.