The Industries of Animals

E THEORY OF EVOLUTION?-?THE CHIEF INDUSTRIES OF MAN?-?THE CHIEF INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS?-?INTELLIGENCE AND I

d "natural history"; but this term is tending to disappear from our vocabulary and to give place to the term "natural sciences." What is the reason of

ach, which he triumphantly dried and fixed on a leaf of paper bearing the date of the discovery and the name of the locality. A herbarium became a sort of journal, recalling to its fortunate possessor all the wanderings of the happy chase, all the delightful sounds and sights of the country. Every naturalist co

ns, and the magnifying glass gives place to the microscope. When the observer begins to pursue his studies in the laboratory he no longer cares to pass the threshold. He has still so much to learn concerning the most common creatures that i

nt and easy, and to make it the property of a small coterie, when it was formerly accessible to all, is not sufficient to render

e facts or the result would be chaos; it is necessary to choose the characters and to give preponderance to certain of them. This sorting of characters has been executed with the sagacity of genius by the illustrious naturalists of the last century and the beginning of the present. But the frames which they have traced are fixed and rigid; nature with her infinite plasticity escapes from them. We render a great homage to the classifi

n studied, the form and function of internal organs were investigated. Physiology and comparative ana

ts?-?an inevitable result of the different nature of the observations to be made?-?did

e study of facts invariably brought to the pen of the writer the same enthusiastic admiration of the marvellous part played by Providence in nature.1 The phenomena in which this action was not strikingly apparent were merely described without any attempt to relate them with each other, or wi

omes more firmly established. If we can imagine a time arriving when all the possible phenomena are known, and the existing hypothesis still explains them, nothing henceforth can overturn it, the science is completed. That is the simple case in which a theory has been victorious; but if it is contradic

essive improvements is the aim to be pursued. A collection of studies constitutes a science when a hypothesis has arisen alre

in the natural sciences; and if it is necessary to be constantly preoccupied with the general ideas of the day, it is not at all necessary to adhere to them

day come out of the struggle victoriously. A prodigious quantity of facts, of comparative anatomy and of embryology, inexplicable without it, emerge from the chaos and constitute a whole, truly and marvellously homogeneous. Issued from the natural sciences, the doct

th the pen of Lamarck, but immediately fell under the attacks of Cuvier.4 It is to Darwin that the honour belongs of having rescued it from oblivion and of having initiated the movement which to-day rules the natural sciences. Studies in embryology and anatomy are rising withou

ound together. Volumes would not suffice to exhaust the subject; but if the entire task is too considerable, I may at least hope to accomplish a part of it by treating of those facts which may be brought together under the

eed on it, although neither his nails nor his teeth nor his muscles make it natural to him. To hunt, to fish, to defend his territory against the wild beasts who attacked it and himself, to drive back tribes of his fellows who would diminish his provisions, these were the first rudiments of the industry of Man. Having become more skilful, he obtained in an expedition more game than he could consume at once; he then kept near him living beasts in order to sacrifice them when hunger came. His reserve of animals increased; they became accustomed to live near him; and he took care of his larder. A flock was gradually constituted, and the owner learnt to profit from all the resources which it offered him, from milk to wool. Henceforth he became economical with his beasts, and moved about in order to procure for them abundance of grass and water. He was still always hunting and fighting; but there were now accessory industries, and he was especially occupied in the domesti

unter; but his whole organisation tends to facilitate the capture of living prey. His agility and the strength of his muscles enable him to seize it at the first leap before it can escape. With his sharp claws he holds it; his teeth are so keen and his jaw so strong that he kills it immediately; with such natural advantages what need has he of ingenuity? But in the case of

fa. Woven dwellings, constructed with materials entangled in one another, like the nests of birds, proceed from the same method of manufacture as the woollen stuffs of which nomad tribes make their tents. The Termites who construct vast dwellings of clay, the Beavers who build huts of wood and of mud, have in this industry reached the same point as Man. They do not build so well, no doubt, nor in so complex a fashion as modern architects and engineers, but they work in the same way. All these ingenious artisans op

on and an act that has become instinctive and so inveterate to the species that it has re-acted on its body, and thus profoundly modified it so as to pr

accomplish it without knowing it; the brain no longer intervenes; the spinal cord or the chain of ganglia alone govern this order of acts, to which h

tive acts, Fabre brings forward the following5:?-?The Chalicodoma, a hymenopterous relative of the Bees, constructs nests composed of cells formed of mud agglutinated with saliva. The cell once constructed, the insect begins to fill it with honey before laying an egg there. He returns with his booty and wishes to disburse himself in the nest, finds the cellule which he has to fill, and proceeds always in the same order: first, he plunges his head in the cell and disgorges the honey which fills his crop; secondly, he emerges from the cell, turns round, and lets fall the pollen which remains attached to his legs. Suppose that an insect has just

mple question of degree. Look at a boy who is going to jump over a ditch: he begins by spitting into his hands and rubbing them one against the other before taking his spring. In wh

ects give proof of remarkable reflection, sagacity, and intelligence in co-ordinating their actions in the presence of an event to which they are not accustomed, and in attaining an end which has present

ible or not of development; but much rather as a series of intelligent acts at first reasoned, t

intelligence of his ancestors. He himself no longer needs to take thought either to preserve his life or to assure the perpetuation of his race. The qualities which he rece

another point of view they are much better executed, with less hesitation, with a slighter expenditure of cerebral force and a minimum of muscular effort. A habitual act costs us much less to

her words, that species have been created such as we see them to-day? The preceding explanation, however, has the advantage of being in harmony with the general theory of evolution, which, whether true or not, so well explains the most complicat

poisoning a nervous ganglion. The cricket is paralysed without being killed; its flesh does not putrefy, and yet it makes no movement. The Sphex places an egg on this motionless prey, and the larva which emerges from it devours the cricket. Here assuredly is a marvellous and certain instinct. One cannot even object that the strokes of the sting are inevitably directed

h the ages that which we know. It is possible; but why, it may be asked, this hypothesis, apparently gratuitous, of strokes of the sting given at random? Are there any facts which render this explanation plausible? Assuredly. Thus the Bembex, which especially attacks Diptera to make them the prey of its larv?, throws itself suddenly on them and kills them with one blow in any part of the body. It is unable in this way to amass in advance sufficient provision for its larv?; the corpses would putrefy. It is obliged to return from time to time bearing new pasture.9 Again, M. Paul Marchal, taking up the study of instinct in the Cerceris ornata,10 has shown that in this species at least of Sphegid? the stings have not so considerable an effect. This insect attacks a wild bee, the Hali

has been distorted, but that is to admit some degree of variation; the hypothesis of degeneration is as gratuitous as the

hese categories I propose to arrange the facts in such a way as to bring forward first those animals which, having no special organs, are obliged to exercise the

immediate search for prey; and to these may be added those which are related to them as re-action is to action

vilisations, we shall study among animals the art of collecting provisions,

and we shall see how certain species, after having constructed admirably-arranged hous