--

there is an inference from these facts of condition as the instinct of the bees even more importance than any touching would be on this hypothesis, - a system simply our private vanity, supposing that of valuable rules with the originating what Sir John Lubbock has observed principle lost. But still it is difficult to should be confirmed by future observa- suppose that even the most degenerate tion. The favourite theory amongst an descendant of a creature which helped to influential school of naturalists, - Mr. organize the hive, could have become so Lewes, for instance, insists very eagerly stupid as not to find its way out of a bellupon it in his "Problems of Life and glass with the mouth turned away from Mind," — is that instinct is nothing but the light. Why, indeed, should not comthe organized and hereditarily transmitted mon sense be hereditary as well as inexperience of ancestors who have learned stinct? With us it is so, and the bee to adapt their habits to their needs. must have plenty of occasion for the exThus the sure and elaborate instincts of ercise of common sense in its little perthe bees of to-day would be nothing but plexities. There is clearly a great diffithe confirmed predispositions to habit, culty in ascribing the origin of very recondue to the ingenuity and resource of the dite and artistic insects to the wit of a primitive bees of many centuries ago, creature which has transmitted absolutehereditarily transmitted to their descend-ly no wit along with the traditions it inants. Now we are not going to refer to vented. If Mr. Lewes's theory of the the difficulty that unless you start from origin of instinct be true, some Lycurcertain instincts as a fixed point of departure, you can hardly find any explanation of the growth and building-up of any other instincts, though it is obviously difficult to conceive what you could do, without assuming the instincts of sex, and either those of parental care, or of a ready-made power of discriminating the proper food and the best way to find that food, towards explaining the genesis of any other instinct at all. But without regard to that further difficulty, one is compelled by Sir John Lubbock's facts to ask oneself, How is it that if bees were once so ingenious and skilful as to invent the architectural and organizing habits which they have now transmitted as instincts to their descendants, those descendants should be so utterly devoid of any similar intelligence of their own, that they cannot communicate to their fellows the best way to a store of honey, nor even find their way out of an open bellglass, simply because the opening is at the end furthest from the light? Surely if Mr. Lewes's theory of the origin of instinct were true, the only thing to say of these bees would be that their instincts [TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] have been so completely sufficient for their life, that, by being saved from neces- SIR, I am diurnally compelled to sity, they have lost that invention which read in silent indignation Radical and is said to flow from necessity; in other Revolutionary sentiments from which I words, that the bees have been degraded vehemently dissent. When it comes, through the very perfection of the in- however, to disestablishing the Busy stincts formed for them and transmitted Bee, and indirectly suggesting a suspito them by their ancestors. No doubt it cion of the infallibility of Dr. Watts, it is not the only case in which the trans- seems to me that the stones would cry mission of a valuable method has caused out, were I to hold my peace. Even the the complete loss of the originating fac-impostor Mahomet (as I was very propulty to which that method owed its origin. erly taught to call him in my youth) reChinese science is said to be in the same spected that exemplary insect, and ex

gus among the bees must have sworn the aboriginal hive to a system of rules which he deemed useful for them, and then departed never to return, without calculating that the result would be to kill out mind amongst them, through the blighting force of overpowering custom. Anyhow, if Sir John Lubbock's views of the bees be true, we must infer that if the instinct which now guides bees be not original in the species, the species must at one time have been vastly superior in general intelligence and resource to what it now is; and that the accumulation of experience, instead of promoting, must have diminished the general mental resources of the bees. Even that inference would itself be of the greatest moment in estimating the worth of mere experience as the chief factor in the progress of races and the growth of organizations.

THE BUSY BEE.

cepted her from the curse he launched on of their own babies. In the direct lines other buzzing and stinging things. "All both male and female, of her ancestry, a flies," he says in the Koran, "shall be worker-bee may look back in vain for a burned in Hell-fire except the Bee." Sir, grandfather or grandmother from whom feel for the worker bee as a spinster she could have inherited one of her taland a sister; and I am proud of her in ents. Only her maiden aunts a despite of Sir John Lubbock, for labouring spised, but most meritorious class of reso industriously for ten hours a day for lations - have preceded her in the paths the good of the community and the sup- of industry and the arts of hymenopteral port of those little grubs, her nephews life. And after this you say, in your very and nieces. If she and her companions, next article, on "Sex in Education," that like so many Danaïdes, do put the drones"a system which is successful only with to death, it is no doubt because they spinsters is in great part sterile, and does agree with Mrs. Denner in "Felix Holt," good to one generation, but not to all that an idle male creature "straddling generations!" about the house on a rainy day" consti- Surely it is clear that the worker-bees tutes an insufferable nuisance, which cannot have "inherited" their instincts, must be abated before any good work in any sense in which the word "inherican be done on the premises. tance" is properly applied? And if they My object in breaking silence, how-have not done so, and if this great scaf ever, is not merely to protest against fold of the doctrine of the Evolution of your disparagement of a virtuous insect mind and morals breaks down in so cruand a pious divine, but to ask whether cial an instance as that of the cleverest those same bees do not form a serious of the insects, is it not possible that it stumbling-block in the way of our accept- may also fail to be the true explanation of ance of the doctrine of the hereditary those other instincts in larger beings, transmission of acquired instincts? You which we used to classify under the name do not seem to remember it, judging of Conscience, before we had heard anyfrom your remarks, but please, Sir, keep thing about the hereditary transmission in mind the fact that the bees who ac- of psychical habits? — I am, Sir, &c., complish all the wonders of the hive, who A BUSY OLD-MAID. make the honeycomb and the honey, and provide for the nurture and admonition of the larvæ, are every one of them, without exception, Old-Maids. The married women, under the excellent Bee-Constitution, are well and richly provided for, and now and then take the lead in public affairs, as Dido, Boadicea, Zenobia, Cath-mospheric changes in the leech, is geneerine II., Maria Theresa, and our own rally admitted; and the idea of utilizing Queen Victoria have done. But the bees this little creature as a sort of weatherthink, like Mr. Forsyth, that it is for glass arose long ago, we have evidence, those who are free from domestic cares in one of the early volumes of the Gentleto concern themselves with the ordinary man's Magazine. A correspondent of affairs of the nation, and accordingly we that venerable journal stated that if a find that it is exclusively the single-lady leech be kept in a phial or bottle, partly bees (Mr. Bouverie's "failure's ") who ex- filled with water, it will indicate approachercise the franchise of the hive, and even ing changes in the weather. He placed elect a sovereign when, the throne hap- on a window-ledge an eight-ounce phial pens to be vacant. And now, Sir, will containing a leech and about six ounces Mr. Darwin tell me whence these arti- of water, and watched it daily. Accordsans and stateswomen derive their archi- ing to his description, when the weather tectural and political instincts? Is it continued serene and beautiful, the leech from their fathers? Certainly not. For lay motionless at the bottom of the phial, thousands of generations their male an- rolled in a spiral form. When it began cestors have been good-for-nothing, loaf- to rain at noon, or a little before or after, ing drones, who never turned their an- the leech was found at the top of its tennæ to an hour's work in their lives. lodging, where it remained until the Is it, then, from their mothers? Still weather became settled. When wind less could this be the case, for they have was approaching, the leech galloped lived like so many obese sultanas in their about its limpid habitation with great harems, not even attending to the wants liveliness, seldom resting until the wind

From Chambers' Journal. PROGNOSTICATIONS BY LEECHES. THAT there is a sensitiveness to at

The hollow mists begin to blow,

became violent. When a thunder-storm | group of weather prognosticators. The was about to appear, the animal sought a doctor declined an invitation because lodgment above the level of the water, displayed great uneasiness, and moved about in convulsive-like threads. In clear frost, as in fine summer weather, it lay constantly at the bottom; whereas, in snowy weather, like as in rain, it dwelt at the very mouth of the phial. The observer covered the mouth of the phial with a piece of linen cloth, and changed the water every week or two. He seems to have had faith in the correctness of his own observations and conclusions; but went no further in the attempt at explanation than to say: "What reasons may be assigned for these movements, I must leave philosophers to determine; though one thing is evident to everybody

that the leech must be affected in the same way as the mercury and spirit in the weather-glass; and has doubtless a very surprising sensation, that change of weather, even days before, makes a visible alteration in its manner of living."

The clouds look black, the glass is low,
The soot falls down, the spaniels sleep,
And spiders from their cobwebs creep.
Last night the sun went pale to bed,
The moon in haloes hid her head,
The boding shepherd heaves a sigh,
For see- the rainbow spans the sky;
The walls are damp, the ditches smell,
Closed is the pink-eyed pimpernel;
Hark how the chairs and tables crack!
Old Betty's joints are on the rack;
Loud quack the ducks, the peacocks cry,
The distant hills are looking nigh;
How restless are the snorting swine!
The busy flies disturb the kine;
Low o'er the grass the swallow wings;
The cricket, too, how loud he sings!

And so on, for forty or fifty lines, crowd-
ed with folk-lore concerning weather-
warnings: ending with

The leech, disturbed, is newly risen
Quite to the summit of his prison.

This leech-philosophy appears to have had many believers in the last century. Dr. Merryweather (not a bad name for In a letter to Lady Hesketh, dated 1789, a weather-prophet) stated, in a pamphlet Cowper wrote in one of his (too-rare) published in 1851, that these lines by Dr. cheerful moods, and among other gossip Jenner first suggested to him the prosesaid: "Mrs. Throckmorton carries us cution of a series of experiments on the to-morrow in her chaise to Chichely. behaviour of the leech under the influThe event must, however, be supposed ence of atmospheric changes. He noto depend on the elements, at least on ticed, in the neighbourhood of Whitby, the state of the atmosphere, which is that if the leech was restless in calm fine turbulent beyond measure. Saturday it weather, a storm was coming; this, at thundered, last night it lightened, and at any rate, was the inference which he three this morning I saw the sky red as a drew from a number of observations. He city in flames could have made it. I procured twelve white glass bottles, have a leech in a bottle that foretells all seven inches high by three in diameter, these prodigies and convulsions of na- of one pint capacity. He put one leech ture. Not, as you will naturally conjec- in each, and so arranged the bottles that ture, by articulate utterances of oracular the leeches could "see each other," pernotices, but by a variety of gesticulations, haps that they might agree among themwhich here I have not room to give an selves to make a grand united demonstraaccount of. Suffice it to say, that no tion. A metal tube ascended from the change of weather surprises him, and mouth of each bottle, of such diameter that, in point of the earliest and most that the leech could not easily enter it, but accurate intelligence, he is worth all the might do so if he determined on it. No barometers in the world. None of them fresh air could enter the bottle except all, indeed, can make the least pretence through a small orifice in the tube. All to foretell thunder, a species of capacity the tubes were varnished inside, to faof which he has given the most unequivo- cilitate cleaning. If a leech climbed up cal evidence. I gave but sixpence for into his tube in the daytime, his movehim, which is a groat more than the mar-ments might be watched by an observer; ket-price; though he is, in fact, or rather but how to know whether he had aswould be, if leeches were not found in every ditch, an invaluable acquisition."

The celebrated Dr. Jenner did the leech the honour of embalming him in verse, as one among a singularly large

cended during the night, and gone down again? An ingenious bit of apparatus was devised, to enable or compel each leech to register his own movements. A small bell was elevated above the middle

of the apparatus, and twelve little ham-carefully the changes which supervened mers around it; a gilt chain, descending in the weather whenever any peculiar from each hammer, passed round a pul- movements of the animals took place; ley attached to a disk just above the bot- but it is difficult to transform into definite tle; across the lower end of the tube was language the relation which may appear a small piece of whalebone, held up by a to exist between the leech-movements bit of wire attached to its centre; this and the weather-changes. His leeches wire passed through an aperture in the do not seem to have been particularly top of the tube, and hooked on to the sensitive to approaching rain; what they chain. Such being the mechanism, the chiefly denoted was storm, another name action may be pretty easily comprehend- for wind. Rain may be more important ed: if the leech ascended, he dislodged than wind in inland agricultural districts; the bit of whalebone, and caused the but wind is more important than rain on hammer to ring the bell. Supposing the the sea-coast, so far as concerns the observer to be in another room, and to safety of ships and of human lives. Dr. hear the bell ring, he inferred that a par- Merryweather, as a physician and a resiticular change in the weather influenced dent at Whitby, had many means of the leech; and if two or more were set knowing the destructive effects of violent ringing at one time, the inference would winds on the Yorkshire coast; and hoped be pro tanto stronger. This, we may re- to make his prognosticator available for mark, was not self-registering, as that foretelling the approach of storms, gales, term is usually employed in connection or winds from particular quarters. He with scientific instruments; it signalled, even indulged a hope that the Admiralty but did not leave a permanent record. or the Board of Trade might be induced to place such weather prognosticators at various places along the coast, to act as storm-warnings.

On microscopically examining a leech, Dr. Merryweather considered that he could point to a particular part of the animal as the seat of sensitiveness to weather-changes; and carried away by his fancies, he declared that leeches are capable of affection; "for after they become acquainted with me, they never attempt to bite me. Some of them have, over and over again, thrown themselves into graceful undulations when I have approached them: I suppose an expression of their being glad to see me."

Dr. Merryweather described the mode in which he put his predictions to the test; but his definitions need not be gone into. There is no reason to doubt that his leeches did shew sensitiveness to the weather, or that he endeavoured to watch

CORRESPONDENCE.

The apparatus which Dr. Merryweather prepared for the Great Exhibition in 1851, was a stand of polished mahogany, about three feet in diameter by three feet and a half in height. Twelve leechbottles were arranged in a circle on the base of the stand; while the tubes, chains, hammers, bell, &c., gave a kind of pyramid form to the whole. The Jury Report of the Great Exhibition stated that "it is proposed to place a leech" in each glass; if this means that the leeches were not actually sent with the rest of the apparatus, we can readily understand why the jury offered no opinion as to the value of the invention.

specimens will show." He then gives the specimens, which are all from my poems, as the William Ellery Channing," on pages 156 and book itself, "Thoreau the Poet-Naturalist, by 157 will show. The extracts are also con

WE take pleasure in inserting the following letter, from which it will appear that a singular piece of injustice has inadvertently been done to one of our American poets by a. British re-tinued on page 158. viewer:

Very sincerely yours,
ALFRED B. STREET.

P. S. There are other extracts from my poems in the same book by Mr. Channing, viz. on page 137, "Where its long rings unwinds the fern," etc.; page 170, "The hickory shell cracked open by its fall," etc.; page 248 (these quoted by Mr. Channing himself), "A ceascless glimmering near the ground betrays" etc.; and, page 250, "The squirrel chatters merrily," etc.; and there is mention of me by Mr. Channing on page 254.

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