John Lubbock

“ It seems almost inconceivable that a bee should live with such an immense number of parasites in its body; and still more so, that it should, meanwhile, go about its daily duties as if nothing was the matter. ”

“ For other experiments testing the recognition of relations, although the old ants had absolutely never seen the young ones until the moment, some days after arriving at maturity, they were introduced into the nest, yet in all cases they were undoubtedly recognized as belonging to the community. It would seem, therefore, to be established that the recognition of ants is not personal and individual, and that their harmony is not due to the fact that each ant is acquainted with every other member of the community. ”

“ I believe there are thousands who consider that according to his theory a sheep might turn into a cow, or a zebra into a horse. No one would more confidently withstand any such hypothesis, his view being, of course, not that the one could be changed into the other, but that both are descended from a common ancestor. No one, at any rate, will question the immense impulse which Darwin has given to the study of natural history, the number of new views he has opened up, and the additional interest which he has aroused in, and contributed to, biology. ”

“ Moreover, although the small attached worm in Sphærularia is not altogether exactly like the ordinary young ones, still, in size and general appearance, it remarkably resembles them; and, lastly, unless we may regard it as being the male, that sex is, as yet, entirely unknown. Although, therefore, I have not been able to distinguish any generative organs, or trace of spermatozoa, I think that I am justified in considering that in Sphærularia the male is far smaller than the female, and that the two are fastened together in a certain definite manner and position. ”

“ Like the sand of the sea, the stars of heaven have ever been used as effective symbols of number, and the improvements in our methods of observation have added fresh force to our original impressions. We now know that our earth is but a fraction of one out of at least 75,000,000 worlds. But this is not all. In addition to the luminous heavenly bodies, we can not doubt that there are countless others, invisible to us from their greater distance, smaller size, or feebler light; indeed, we know that there are many dark bodies which now emit no light, or comparatively little. ”

“ In fact, while mankind, during the earlier part, if not the whole, of the Stone period, appear (in Denmark, at least) to have been exclusively hunters and fishermen, with the Bronze age we find evidences of a pastoral and agricultural life, in the presence of domestic oxen, pigs, and sheep. It is probable that the men of the Stone period were conquered and partly replaced, by a more civilized race coming from the East. It is not only the introduction of bronze and of domestic animals which points to such a conclusion. The new people burned their dead and collected the bones in funeral urns. ”

“ In another species, however, Polyergus rufescens, which is not British, this is not the case. They present a striking lesson of the degrading tendency of slavery, for they have become entirely dependent on their slaves. Even their bodily structure has undergone a change: their mandibles have lost their teeth, and have become mere nippers—deadly weapons, indeed, but useless except in war. They have lost the greater part of their instincts: their art, that is, the power of building; their domestic habits, for they take no care of their own young, all this being done by the slaves ”

“ Carrying our imagination back into the past, we see before us on the low shores of the Danish Archipelago a race of small men, with heavy overhanging brows, round heads, and faces probably much like those of the present Laplanders. As they must evidently have had some protection from the weather, it is most probable that they lived in tents made of skins. The total absence of metal from the Kjökkenmöddings proves that they had not yet any weapons except those made of wood, stones, horns, and bones. ”

“ It is remarkable that we do not even now know exactly how an ants' nest is begun. Whether they always commence as a colony from some older establishment; whether wandering workers who chance to find a queen under certain circumstances remain with her and begin a new nest; or whether the queen ant, like the queen wasp, forms a cell for herself, and then brings up a few workers, who afterward take upon themselves the labors of the family, as yet we know not. ”

“ So long as the Sphærularia remains quiet, the Bee does not seem incommoded by its presence, which perhaps produces scarcely any abnormal sensations; but if the parasite, being so large in proportion to its victim, were to move about, it would probably so affect and disarrange the viscera of the Bee, that the poor insect would be quite unable to pursue its usual avocations, and would quickly perish. The female Sphærularia being thus, when full-grown, reduced to a merely vegetative existence, the nerves of motion and of sensation must, of course, be useless, and would soon become atrophied. ”

“ It is hardly necessary to point out that, while the spectrum has taught us so much, we have still even more to learn. Why should some substances give few, and others many, lines? Why should the same substance give different lines at different temperatures? What are the relations between the lines and the physical or chemical properties? We may certainly look for much new knowledge of the hidden actions of atoms and molecules from future researches with the spectroscope. It may even, perhaps, teach us to modify our views of the so-called simple substances. ”

“ In a complete survey of the progress of science during the half-century which has intervened between our first and our present meeting, the part played by mathematics would form no insignificant feature. To those, indeed, who are outside its enchanted circle it is difficult to realize the intense intellectual energy which actuates its devotees, or the wide expanse over which that energy ranges. ”

“ L.—The Kjökkenmöddings: recent Geologico-Archæological Researches in Denmark. By John Lubbock, Esq., F.R.S. Denmark occupies a larger space in the history, than in the map, of Europe. The nation is greater than the country; and even if with the growth of physical power in surrounding populations, she has lost somewhat of her influence in political councils, still the Danes of today are no unworthy representatives of their ancestors. Many a larger nation might envy them the position they hold in Science and in Art, and few have contributed more to the progress of human knowledge. ”

“ Let us take our common forest-trees, shrubs, and tall, climbing—plants not, of course, a natural or botanical group, for they belong to a number of different orders, but a group characterized by attaining to a height of say over eight feet. We will in some cases only count genera; that is to say, we will count all the willows, for instance, as one. These trees and shrubs are plants with which you are all familiar, and are about thirty-three in number. Now, of these thirty-three no less than eighteen have edible fruits or seeds, such as the plum, apple, arbutus, holly, hazel, beech, and rose. ”

“ An ant measuring say one-sixth of an inch, the pencil, being seven inches high, is consequently forty-two times as long as the ant. It bears, therefore, somewhat the same relation to the ant as a column two hundred and fifty feet high does to a man. The pencil having been moved six inches, it is as if a man in a country he knew well would be puzzled at being moved a few hundred feet, or, if put down in a square containing less than an acre, could not find a column two hundred and fifty feet high, that is to say, higher than the Duke of York's column. ”