Mind in animals / by Professor Ludwig Büchner ; Translated, with the author's permission, from the German of the third revised edition, by Annie Besant.

  • Ludwig Büchner
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mind in animals / by Professor Ludwig Büchner ; Translated, with the author's permission, from the German of the third revised edition, by Annie Besant. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    others. A very peaceful and gentle ant, which never ventures on a combat, is the Botryomyrmex meridionalis. The English naturalist. Sir John Lubbock, who has made many careful attempts to investigate the character and life-habits of ants, and who has published his results in the Journal of the Linnaean Society (Zool. xii. and xiii. vols.) was able to establish a great distinction in the behavior of various individuals under exactly similar circum- stances. As there are in Europe alone more than thirty genera and more than a hundred species, and in the whole world more than a thousand species of ants, sprung from the same stock, it is easy to understand what a countless host of differences in bodily construction, character, intelligence^ conduct, habits, manners, and so on, there must be—differences which it would take whole volumes to fully describe. We will only concern ourselves here with the most remarkable, striking, and best known species. That the extreme intelligence of ants must be related to a special development of their nervous system and especially of their organ of thought, or brain, will be a matter of course to the anatomist and physiologist, who knows that the organ and the function—or its action under given circumstances—must co-exist side by side. For others, however, it is interesting and important to learn that the brain of the ant is comparatively the largest in the class. Insecta, and is even more developed than that of the bee. According to a table compiled by Titus Graber ( On Insects, vol. i., p. 255) the volume—or size—of the brain of bees is the 200th, and that of the so-called accessory brain,, or the '* stalked bodies, [discovered by Dujardin, and named by him corps pedoncules. See Annales des Sciencesy 3rd series, Zool. tom. xiv. 1850. p. 200.—Tk.] the 1000th part of the size of the whole body, of ants the 280th and the 600th part, while the brain of the cockchafer, which has no accessory brain, is only the 3000th part of its body» There is doubtless, therefore, the same difference as between men and the large mammals (horse, bull, etc.) which are- subject to men, in consequence of their lesser brain and mental powers, although the latter are much smaller and weaker in body This is also true of the huge elephant, although its brain, corresponding with the size of its body,