The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1889-03-16
FISH AND INSECTS.
no They Possess Sense which Human BE-
ings Have Not.


no They Possess sense which Human BE
ings Have Not.
With regard to the hearing and the
sight of insects and the crustacea moth
ing is settled, writes Sir John Lubbock.
These creatures possess in many cases
curious contrivances which, while OBJ
viously sense organs OF some kind, can
not be assigned their functions with
any certainty. Thus some naturalists
regard as auditory apparatus that
which others believe to be organs of
touch or taste, or even sight. Tho
ways ofnature in these obscure corners
of creation, moreover, are so fantastic
that it is difficult to know which to
expect, or by what standard to form
judgments. There are some queer
crustacea, for instance, which improve
their hearing by putting grains Of
sand in their ears. Is that mere in
stinct? Then there are other creatures
which possess two kinds of eyes, the
compound eye and the ocellus, which
is suspected of being a sort of un-
finished or aborted organ by some
naturalists, while others think the
compound eye is for the day and the
ocellus for the night. Experiment. by
producing spurious and contradictory
results, has only confused the ques-
ton still more. There are the strange
insects which carry their ears in their
tails, of all places in the world; though
these are really not so marvellous as
the bombadier beetle, who mounts two
apparent guns at his stern. and, when
attacked, fires them, producing loud
report, a little cloud of white vapor,
and an emission of some secretion that
smells and burns like nitric acid.
If we descend iuto the depths of the
ocean we find other wonders, fishes
which are equipped with electric lamps
in their heads. and can thus see their
way and their prey in the absymal
darkness of the great depths; other
fishes which angle with tentcles tipped
with miniature lights; yet other crea-
lures which carry lamps behind instead
OF in front; fishes that hear through
holes in their sides; creatures which
see with the ends of their attenn@;
marvels of many kinds, in short
such as the cunning story tellers
of the Orient never could have mag
ined. To get at the actual truth about
all these weird, uncanny things is we'll
nigh impossible because of the diff
Guilty of ascertaining how much or how
little they can see and hear. and what
use they make Of all their complicated
apparatus, the several parts of which
are the despair of the naturalist every
where, and tempt him to audacious
and ill-founded guesses. Sir John Lub-
book, to his credit be it said, steadily
resists all such temptations, and when
he doe snot understand thing valiantly
says SO. But he does not hold him
self under any obligation to restrain
the exercise of the scientific imagina-
ton, and the drift of experiment is to-
ward the suggestions of several sur
prising possibilities, all tending to
strengthen the surmise that there are
more senses in nature than man pos
sesses. Thus he says: 1--WE find in
animals complex organs of sense, richly
supplied with nerves, but the functions
of which we are as yet powerless to
explain. There may be fifty other
senses as different from ours as sound
is from sight, and even within the
boundaries of our own senses there
may be endless sounds which we can
not hear. and colors as different as red
from green of which we have no con-
ception. These and thousand other
questions remain for solution. The
familiar world which surrounds US
may be totally different place to
other animals. To them it may be full
of music which we can not hear. OF
color which we can not see, of sensa-
tiOns which we can not conceive. ~