John Lubbock

“ Now glimpses of the truth are gradually revealing themselves; we perceive that there is a reason—and in many cases we know what that reason is—for every difference in form, in size, and in color; for every bone and every feather, almost for every hair. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Moreover, each problem which is solved opens out vistas, as it were, of others perhaps even more interesting. With this great change the name of our illustrious countryman, Darwin, is intimately associated, and the year 1859 will always be memorable in science as having produced his great work on "The Origin of Species." In the previous year he and Wallace had published short papers, in which they clearly state the theory of natural selection, at which they had simultaneously and independently arrived. We can not wonder that Darwin's views should have at first excited great opposition. ”

“ To science again we-owe the idea of progress. The ancients, says Bagehot, "had no conception of progress; they did not so much as reject the idea; they did not even entertain it." It is not, I think, now going too far to say that the true test of the civilization of a nation must be measured by its progress in science. It is often said, however, that great and unexpected as the recent discoveries have been, there are certain ultimate problems which must ever remain unsolved. ”

“ In education some progress has been made toward a more rational system. When I was at a public school, neither science, modern languages, nor arithmetic formed any part of the school system. This is now happily changed. Much, however, still remains to be done. Too little time is still devoted to French and German, and it is much to be regretted that even in some of our best schools they are taught as dead languages. Lastly, with few exceptions, only one or two hours on an average are devoted to science. We have, I am sure, none of us any desire to exclude or discourage literature. ”

“ Every purely chemical examination—whether proximate or ultimate—of a compound, presupposes the destruction of the substance under examination: the chemist "murders to dissect." But observations on the action of a substance on the rays of light, on the relative volumes occupied by molecular quantities of a substance, on its velocity of transpiration in the liquid or gaseous state—these teach us the habits of the living substance. ”

“ Fifty years ago it was a very general opinion that animals which are unlike when mature were dissimilar from the beginning. It is to Von Baer, the discoverer of the mammalian ovum, that we owe the great generalization that the development of the egg is in the main a progress from the general to the special; in fact, that embryology is the key to the laws of animal development. Thus the young of existing species resemble in many cases the mature forms which flourished in ancient times. Huxley has traced up the genealogy of the horse to the Miocene Anchitherium. ”

“ When the supporters of Darwin are told that his theory is incredible, they may fairly ask why it is impossible that a species in the course of hundreds of thousands of years should have passed through changes which occupy only a few days or weeks in the life-history of each individual. ”

“ The general result is that to insects, and especially to bees, we owe the beauty of our gardens, the sweetness of our fields. To their beneficent though unconscious action flowers owe their scent and color, their honey—nay, in many cases, even their form. Their present shape and varied arrangements, their brilliant colors, their honey, and their sweet scent are all due to the selection exercised by insects. In these cases the relation between plants and insects is one of mutual advantage. In many species, however, plants present us with complex arrangements adapted to protect them from insects ”

“ Energy has been defined to be "the capacity, or power, of any body, or system of bodies, when in a given condition, to do a measurable quantity of work." Such work may either change the condition of the bodies in question, or it may affect other bodies; but in either case energy is expended by the agent upon the recipient in performance of the work. The law then states that the total amount of energy in the agents and recipients taken together remains unaltered by the changes in question. ”

“ However small the prison, however large the quantity of food, these stupid creatures will starve in the midst of plenty rather than feed themselves. I have had a nest of this species under observation for a long time, but never saw one of the masters feeding, I have kept isolated specimens for weeks by giving them a slave for an hour or two a day to clean and feed them, and under these circumstances they remained in perfect health, while but for the slaves they would have perished in two or three days. I know no other case in Nature of a species having lost the instinct of feeding. ”

“ In the words of the same author, "The leaves of the herbage at our feet take all kinds of strange shapes, as if to invite us to examine them. Star-shaped, heart-shaped, spear-shaped, arrow-shaped, fretted, fringed, cleft, furrowed, serrated, sinuated, in whorls, in tufts, in spires, in wreaths, endlessly expressive, deceptive, fantastic, never the same from footstalk to blossom, they seem perpetually to tempt our watchfulness and take delight in outstripping our wonder." ”

“ Indeed, one very marked feature in modern discovery is the manner in which distinct branches of science have thrown, and are throwing, light on one another. Thus the study of geographical distribution of living beings, to the knowledge of which our late general secretary, Mr. Sclater, has so greatly contributed, has done much to illustrate ancient geography. The existence of high northern forms in the Pyrenees and Alps points to the existence of a period of cold when Arctic species occupied the whole of habitable Europe. ”

“ If the bees or ants merely follow their more fortunate companion, or if they hunt her by scent, the matter is comparatively simple; if, on the contrary, the others have the route described to them, the case becomes very different. To determine this, therefore, I have made a great number of experiments, of which, however, I will here only mention a few. Under ordinary circumstances, if an ant discovers a stock of food, she carries as much as possible away to the nest, and then returns for more, accompanied generally by several friends. ”

“ Most ants, indeed, will carry off the larvæ and pupæ of others if they get a chance; and this explains, or at any rate throws some light upon, that most remarkable phenomenon, the existence of slavery among ants. If you place a number of larvæ and pupæ in front of a nest of the horse ant, for instance, they are soon carried off; and those which are not immediately required for food remain alive for some days, though I have never been able to satisfy myself whether they are fed by their captors. ”

“ Even the more recent period carries back the record of man's existence to a distance so great as altogether to change our views of ancient history. Nor is it only as regards the antiquity and material condition of man in prehistoric times that great progress has been made. If time permitted, I should have been glad to dwell on the origin and development of language, of custom, and of law. On all of these the comparison of the various lower races, still inhabiting so large a portion of the earth's surface, has thrown much light ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is an owl that has been trained by the Graces. It is a bat that loves the morning light. It is the aërial reflection of a dolphin. It is the tender domestication of a trout." That is, no doubt, very poetical, but it would be absolutely useless as a scientific description, and, I must confess, would never have suggested, to me at least, the idea of a swallow. ”

“ Passing from geometry proper to the other great branch of mathematical machinery, viz., algebra, it is not too much to say that within the period now in review there has grown up a modern algebra, which to our founders would have appeared like a confused dream, and whose very language and terminology would be as an unknown tongue. ”

“ Farmers have found by experience that it is not desirable to grow the same crop in the same field year after year, because the soil becomes more or less exhausted. In this respect, therefore, the powers of dispersion possessed by many seeds are a great advantage to the species. Moreover, they are also advantageous in giving the seed a chance of germinating in new localities suitable to the requirements of the species. Thus a common European species, Xanthium spinosum, has rapidly spread over the whole of South Africa, the seeds being carried in the wool of sheep. ”

“ The species of Lasius make up in numbers what they want in strength. Several of them seize an enemy at once, one by each of her legs or antennæ, and, when they have once taken hold, they will suffer themselves to be cut in pieces rather than let go.
Polyergus rufescens, the celebrated slave-making or Amazon ant, has a mode of combat almost peculiar to herself. The jaws are very powerful and pointed. If attacked—if, for instance, another ant seizes her by a leg—she at once takes her enemy's head into her jaws, which generally makes her quit her hold. ”

“ Much also has been done in the way of building up compounds the existence of which was predicted by theory. Indeed, the extent to which hitherto undiscovered substances can be predicated is doubtless the greatest triumph achieved by chemists during the past fifty years. As yet, however, only the statical side of chemistry has been developed. While the physicist has been engaged in tracing, for the gaseous condition at least, the paths of the molecules and calculating their velocities, the chemist, whose business is with the atoms within the molecule, can point to no such scientific conquests. ”

“ The ancient poets described certain gifted mortals as privileged to descend into the interior of the earth, and have exercised their imagination in recounting the wonders there revealed. As in other cases, however, the realities of science have proved more varied and surprising than the dreams of fiction. ”