The record-union., 1897-04-04
DRUNKEN INSECTS.
Some Strange Facts About Drink and
Certain Insects.

The question has frequently been
asked. by laymen as we'll as scientists,
to what extent, if any, are the habits
and sensations that we associate with
the higher animals, especially man, a
part of the being also of the lower or
ganisms In the earlier days of the Gull
tivation of natural history, and one
need hardly go further back than fifty
years, the distinction between man and
other animated organisms was con-
sidered to be so finely and absolutely
marked as to lead to an almost COM
plete divorce of his sensations and per-
ceptions from those of all other living
matter He was endowed with special
attributes which belonged nowhere
else; he was possessed of faculty and
reasoning power which were denied to
his less favored associates of the living
world; he alone had real intelligence,
while everything below him had as the
highest expression of will only instinct.
In the classifications of a somewhat
still earlier period he was considered
the type distinctive of man." while
everything below him in organization
was animal. The great majority of the
on-scientific thinking world perhaps
even to-day reflect the minds of the
older naturalists, and surely they did
before the great revolution in thought
which followed, within a few years, the
appearance lin 1850 of Mr.. Darwin's
epoch making work, THE Origin of
Species" From that time on an al
most endless series of facts have been
gathered by busy observers upon the
habits and mental qualities of animals,
only to prove that mans isolation is
only comparative one, and that what
he possesses and exercises mentally
is similarly possessed, although in an
inferior degree, by organisms which
progressively descend lower and lower
in the animal series. Instinct and in
telligence are properties that belong to
both high and low; natural love, the
sense Of shame Or remorse, and the
esthetic appreciation of form and color
are likewise qualities that in one form
or another find expression with both
classes, and even that most proper ter
mination to life's turmoil in suicide,
has been shown by Lloyd Morgan and
others to find its development among
certain animals, the spiders and
scorpions for example. The latest con-
tr1DutlOn 10 the personal ndDltS OF AMI
| mails has just been made by M. J.
| Lloyd Williams, and curiously enough
| it deals with the drunken habits" of
certain humble bees. He shows that
these insects, in frequenting the crowd
| ed flowers of some of the composites as
cardnus and centaurea. and of a species
| of scabiosa, become infected with their
honey to a state of intoxication, and
| that they give expression to this in
toxication by rolling on the back, strik-
ing the legs wildly in the air, and gen
eral helplessness. The bees rapidly re-
cover from these effects, but strange
though it may appear, they eagerly re-
new the debauch. One Individual
however as Mr.. Williams informs u.s.
manifested the next morning a praise
worthy remorse and disgust, raising it's
head and forelegs as high as it could
above the plants, then precipitately
hurrying away as soon as released"
The most dissolute bee was a neuter
bee of the bombus lapidarius.