The Industries of Animals

CHAPTER IV.. Provisions and Domestic Animals

PROVISIONS AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS

Provisions laid up for a short period--Provisions laid up for a long period--Animals who construct barns--Physiological reserves--Stages between physiological reserves and provisions--Animals who submit food to special treatment in order to facilitate transport--Care bestowed on harvested provisions--Agricultural ants--Gardening ants--Domestic animals of ants--Degrees of civilisation in the same species of ants--Aphis-pens and paddocks--Slavery among ants.

CHAPTER V.. Provision for Rearing the Young

PROVISION FOR REARING THE YOUNG

The preservation of the individual and the preservation of the species--Foods manufactured by the parents for their young--Species which obtain for their larvæ foods manufactured by others--Carcasses of animals stored up--Provision of paralysed living animals--The cause of the paralysis--The sureness of instinct--Similar cases in which the specific instinct is less powerful and individual initiative greater--Genera less skilful in the art of paralysing victims.

CHAPTER VI.. Dwellings

DWELLINGS

Animals naturally provided with dwellings--Animals who increase their natural protection by the addition of foreign bodies--Animals who establish their home in the natural or artificial dwellings of others--Classification of artificial shelters--Hollowed dwellings--Rudimentary burrows--Carefully-disposed burrows--Burrows with barns adjoined--Dwellings hollowed out in wood--Woven dwellings--Rudiments of this industry--Dwellings formed of coarsely-entangled materials--Dwellings woven of flexible substances--Dwellings woven with greater art--The art of sewing among birds--Modifications of dwellings according to season and climate--Built dwellings--Paper nests--Gelatine nests--Constructions built of earth--Solitary masons--Masons working in association--Individual skill and reflection--Dwellings built of hard materials united by mortar--The dams of beavers.

CHAPTER VII.. The Defence and Sanitation of Dwellings

THE DEFENCE AND SANITATION OF DWELLINGS

General precautions against possible danger--Separation of females while brooding--Hygienic measures of Bees--Prudence of Bees--Fortifications of Bees--Precautions against inquisitiveness--Lighting up the nests.

CHAPTER VIII.. Conclusion

CONCLUSION

Degree of perfection in industry independent of zoological superiority--Mental faculties of the lower animals of like nature to Man's.

APPENDIX

INDEX

THE INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS.

CHAPTER I.. Introduction.

INTRODUCTION.

THE NATURALISTS OF YESTERDAY AND THE NATURALISTS OF TO-DAY--NATURAL HISTORY AND THE NATURAL SCIENCES--THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION--THE CHIEF INDUSTRIES OF MAN--THE CHIEF INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS--INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT--INSTINCTIVE ACTIONS ORIGINATE IN REFLECTIVE ACTIONS--THE PLAN OF STUDY OF THE VARIOUS INDUSTRIES.

The naturalists of yesterday and the naturalists of to-day.--The study of animals, plants, rocks, and of natural objects generally, was formerly called "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 this change, and to what does it correspond? for it is rare for a word to be modified in so short a time if the thing designated has not itself varied.

Exterior forms have certainly changed, and the naturalist of yesterday makes upon us the impression of a legendary being. I refer to the person described in George Sand's romances, marching vigorously over hills and valleys in search of a rare insect, which he pricked with delight, or of a plant difficult to reach, 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 concealed within him a lover of idylls or eclogues. Assuredly all the preliminary studies which resulted from these excursions were necessary; we owe gratitude to our predecessors, and we profit from their labours, sometimes regretting the loss of the picturesque fashion in which their researches were carried out.

The naturalist of to-day usually lives more in the laboratory than in the country. Occasional expeditions to the coast or dredgings are the only links that attach him to nature; the scalpel and the microtome have replaced the collector's pins, 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 it seems useless to him to waste his time in seeking those that are rarer, unless he takes into account the unquestionable pleasure of rambling through woods or along coasts;--but such a consideration does not belong to the scientific domain.

A change of conditions of this nature does not suffice to create a science. To take away from a study all that rendered it pleasant and easy, and to make it the property of a small coterie, when it was formerly accessible to all, is not sufficient to render it scientific. It is a fatality rather than a triumph to have undergone such a change. The change is an effect rather than a cause.

When little or nothing was known it was necessary to begin by examining the phenomena which first met the eyes of the observer, such as the customs of animals and the characters which distinguished them from each other. Their differences and resemblances were studied; they were formed into groups, classed and arranged in an order recalling as much as possible their natural relations. In classifying it is impossible to consider all the 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 classifiers when we say that they have confined the facts as closely as it is possible to do. The catalogues which they have prepared are of a utility which is unquestionable, although their rôle is to be useful only; we cannot pretend to make them the expression, the symbol, the formula in which all natural phenomena are to be enclosed. To confound classification with science is to confound the lever with the effect which we expect from it.

Curiosity, moreover, always impels towards that which is least known. External appearances having been studied, the form and function of internal organs were investigated. Physiology and comparative anatomy were born and developed; researches abounded and observers abandoned the field for the laboratory.

The difference in methods of research and the pushing of precision to its extreme limits--an inevitable result of the different nature of the observations to be made--did not however yet render legitimate the claim for natural studies to be called "science."

Natural history and the natural sciences.--A more important event has taken place. The ancient naturalists, like their contemporaries, had firm beliefs which they used as unquestionable principles for the comprehension of all facts. The explanation of an observation was ready in advance. The study of facts invariably brought to the pen of the writer the same enthusiastic admiration of the marvellous part played by Providence in nature. The phenomena in which this action was not strikingly apparent were merely described without any attempt to relate them with each other, or with the other facts. A hypothesis which left a great number of facts without explanation was necessarily insufficient. The descriptions, in spite of all their individual interest, did not constitute a homogeneous whole, a science. They were merely a collection of more or less natural histories.

See, for example, Réaumur, Mémoires pour l'histoire des Insectes, t. i., pp. 23-25.

Science only begins on the day when we have found the simple theory which binds together all the facts at that time known, without of course prejudicing the future. As the number of acquired facts increases, if the theory in question continues to explain the new as it explained the old, the science becomes 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 contradicted by a single well-authenticated fact it must fall or become modified. The more things a theory explains in the present the more chance it has of success in the future. It is still only a matter of chances, for the theory is always at the mercy of unforeseen observation, which may rudely overthrow it.

There is no theory which must not be modified constantly, at least in its details. To render it more and more general by successive improvements is the aim to be pursued. A collection of studies constitutes a science when a hypothesis has arisen already sufficiently strong to oblige us to refer to it all new acquisitions, and to compel us to see if they fortify or oppose it.

It would indeed be a narrow conception if we were to consider as scientific the partisans of the theory alone; more than anywhere else discussion is fruitful 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 servilely. The naturalists of to-day are in possession of a formula with which we must always preoccupy ourselves; in other words, there are natural sciences.

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