refore, not so much
concerned with the various modifications of the three pairs of jaws,
inherited from the primitive Tracheate, and the wings, which have
given us our vast variety of species. It is directed rather to the more
interesting questions of what are called the "instincts" of the insects,
the remarkable metamorphosis by which the young of the higher orders
attain the adult form, and the extraordinary colouring and marking of
bees, wasps, and butterflies. Even these questions, however, are so
large that only a few words can be said here on the tendencies of recent
research.

In regard to the psychic powers of insects it may be said, in the
first place, that it is seriously disputed among the modern authorities
whether even the highest insects (the ant, bee, and wasp) have any
degree whatever of the intelligence which an earlier generation
generously bestowed on them. Wasmann and Bethe, two of the leading
authorities on ants, take the negative view; Forel claims that they show
occasional traces of intelligence. It is at all events clear that the
enormous majority of, if not all, their activities--and especially
those activities of the ant and the bee which chiefly impress the
imagination--are not intelligent, but instinctive actions. And the
second point to be noted is that the word "instinct," in the old sense
of some innate power or faculty directing the life of an animal, has
been struck out of the modern scientific dictionary. The ant or bee
inherits a certain mechanism of nerves and muscles which will, in
certain circumstances, act in the way we call "instinctive." The problem
is to find how this mechanism and its remarkable actions were slowly
evolved.

In view of the innumerable and infinitely varied forms of "instinct"
in the insect world we must restrict ourselves to a single
illustration--say, the social life of the ants and the bees. We are not
without indications of the gradual development of this social life. In
the case of the ant we find that the Tertiary specimens--and about a
hundred species are found in Switzerland alone, whereas there are only
fifty species in the whole of Europe to-day--all have wings and are,
apparently, of the two sexes, not neutral. This seems to indicate
that even in the mid-Tertiary some millions of years after the first
appearance of the ant, the social life which we admire in the ants today
had not yet been developed. The Tertiary bees, on the other hand, are
said t