The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1881-04-25
An Insects Place.

What a horrible place this world must ap-
pear, regarded according to our ideas from an
insects point of view. The air infested with
huge flying hungry dragons, whose gaping and
swapping mouths are ever intent upon swal-
lowing the innocent creatures for whom, ac-
cording to the insect, if he were like us, a
properly constructed world ought to be exclu-
sively adopted The solid earth continually
shaken by the approaching tread of hideous
giants-moving mountains-that crush out
precious lives at every foot-step, and OCCASION
al draughts of the blood of these monsters, stol-
en- at lfe-risk, affording but poor compensation
for such fatal persecution.
Let us hope that the little victims are less
ike ourselves than the doings of ants and bees
might lead us to suppose; that their mental
anxieties are not proportionate to the optical
vigilance indicated by the four thousand eye
lenses of the common house-hy, the seventeen
thousand of the cabbage butterfly and the wide
awake organ-fy or the twenty-five thousand
possessed by certain species ofsstill more vigi-
liant beetles. The insect must see whole world
of wonders of which we know little or nothing
True, we have microscopes, with which we
can see one thing at time if carefully laid
upon the stage; butt what is the finest instru-
ment that Ross can produce compared to that
with twenty-five thousand object glasses, all OF
them probably achromatic, and each one liv-
ing instrument with its own nerve branch sup
plying separate sensation? To creatures thus
endowed with microscopic vision, a cloud of
sandy dust mnst appear like an avalanche of
massive rock fragments, and every thing else
proportionally monstrous
Insects are probably acquainted with
whole world of physical facts of which we are
utterly ignorant. Our auditory apparatus suD-
plies us with a knowledge of sounds. What
are these sounds? They are vibrations of mat
ter which are capable OF producing correspond
ing or sympathetic vibration of the drums of
our ears or the bones Of our skulls. When we
carefully examine the subject, and count the
number of vibrations that produce our world
OF sounds of varying pitch, we find that the
human ear can only respond to limited range
of such vibrations If they exceed three thous-
and per second, the sound becomes too shrll
for average people to hear it, though some ex-
ceptlonal ears can take up pulsatiOnS or waves
that succeed each other rather more rapidly
than this.
Reasoning from the analogy Of stretched
strings and membranes and of air vi
brating in tubes, etc, we are justified in
concluding that the smaller the drum or tube
the higher will be the note it produces when
agitated, and the smaller and more rapid aerial
wave to which it will respond. The drums Of
insect ears, and the tubes, etc., connected with
them, are so minute that their world of sounds
probably begins where ours ceases; that what
appears to us as a continuously sound is to them
series of separate blows just as vibrations of
ten or twelve per second appear to us. We
begin to hear such vibrations as continuous
sounds when they amount to about thirty per
second. The insects continuous sound proba-
bly, begins beyond three thousand. The blue
bottle may thus enjoy whole world of ex
quisite music of which we know nothing.