Morning journal and courier., 1890-03-20
AN ANT CITY.
It's Wonders Described by Sir Edwin
 Arnold.

It's Wonders Described by Sir Edwin
 Arnold.
 Everything comes to man from himself,
 by observation, by devotion, and by true, slow and humble scientific methods, said Sir
 Edwin Arnold in recent address at Tokio.
 You cannot, gentlemen, import our civiliza- tions; you must make science Japanese by time and patience. Take the example of one whose name you will know and honor, Sir John Lubbock. have the privilege of his friendship, and have watched those daily researches of his by which he has thrown so much interesting light upon the habits of ants, bees and wasps, as we'll as on the struo. world. If you have read his delightful books, and could afterwards zee the simple arrangements which have produced them, those among you who are naturalists would be encouraged to attempt similar great and Illuminating things for us in your richly gifted Japan. Wishing to find out the sense of color. and to estimate the preference for different flowers displayed by bees, you see Sir John sitting with watch and pencil in his garden at High Films. On the turf lie pieces of paper, all equal in size and smeared with an exactly equal amount of honey, but variously tinted. In the summer sunshine the bees come and go, attracted by the hon. ey. Selecting their favorite hue-beeause they take the coloied papers for flowers squares, leaving the others comparatively neglected, and thus in a few hours we have obtained an answer from the hive itself, as clear and business like as. the popular vote which you will soon give for your new impe- rial parliament. Sir John showed me, not long ago, the little apparatus where his ant cities are kept Tier above tier, in shallow nk>I h~ oko nd clo h1y double lid of glass and wood, he feeds and studies there the various species of that won- derful insect. He drew back the wooden l lid from one large ant city, which revealed l to me through the glass its tiny people in
 their daily life. There, in the central cell, | was the queen, imposing, majestic, isolated :; courier ants stood around, always respect brought the pupe, or ant babies. in process sion before the sovereign. Slave ants, dark | of hue, performed in gangs the hard work of | the city for the lighter colored kwazoku and shizoku of the community; and small white wood lice, quite blind, ran about the by- ways carefully cleaning up all dirt and litter. You may think I am romancing, but far more wonderful facts reward such an obser. | yer as Sir John Lubbock. Indiyiduals in an
 ant city number from half million to a
 million, and, incredible ss 1t may seem, they ! all know each other. Imagine anybody rec l ognizing every single face in Tokio; but
 these ants, whose brain is smaller than q
 pins head, can surely do thisl All this, for
 which I personally answer, discloses new
 sense in these minute creatures; while ex. periments made with the light rays lying be-
 yond the red and violet, totally invisible te us, prove clearly that many small living
 things are quite as perfectly aware of those
 hidden beams as the magnetic needle is sen
 sitive to the polar current which we canno,
 feel. No doubt to the eye of the dragon fly or of the dyticus beetle, altogether another
 world than ours is represented by the ordi
 nary face of nature, near and far. Thesl
 facts carry the thought of the educated Flu
 ropean as far downward into the lower re-
 gions of biology as the star photographs Tiff
 it upward in the celestial regions. And
 everywhere alike he now sees at work thu
 same grand principle of evolution. Nea
 Sir John Lubbock's house is another on'
 which know, lately the home of the grea | Darwin, whereto scientific men of the flu
 shrine. need not dwell upon the sublim, life work of that illustrIous man. Yol
 know his books no doubt by heart; if not
 hasten to read them all, from "A Natural ist's Voyage in the Beagle" to that marvel ous volume in which he shows us how tn . despised earth worm is one of the very bes servants of mankind, and manufactures flo l us the soil that grows onr barley and ou } rice; and how the clover is impossible wish out the bumblebee, with 8 thousand othe
 abstruse secrets of nature. But what would venture to observe in connection wit l 50 renowned . name ia that many DArwinist F themselves are far as yet from discerning tn
 full purport of their great masters conclu !. sions Evolutions explains almost every f thing except itself. Yet surely natural s' D lection and the survival of the Attest impl . | in the universe such an essential and ha ! almost said such passionate impulse an effort toward universal emelioration that z themselves they might furnish . religion an < . Worship. Oncs dIsmiss the idle idea th