Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/830

810 the yellow flowers of the golden-rod oftener than those of the aster. The same author also observed a harmless Egerian moth which deceived the sharp eye of a trained entomologist by its resemblance to a wasp, and asks why a bird may not be equally deceived. Miss Sarah P. Monks observed a case of mimetic coloring in tadpoles, their tails precisely resembling the leaves of an aquatic plant, Ludovidgia.

Miss Mary E. Murtfeldt having noticed that the butterfly, Pyrameis Hunteri, always deposited its eggs on the plant Antennaria, she was surprised to find a number of larvæ of this butterfly on Artemisia. The customary plant being rare in the immediate vicinity, the butterfly had been misled by the surface resemblance of the white, cottony leaves of the Artemisia to those of the accustomed food-plant. In this case the larvæ all died.

An unquestionable fact has been finally established by recent methods of observation on the habits of insects and other animals, and that is that individuals of the same species vary in intelligence; that they are not automata; that they are not impelled by a blind instinct to perform certain acts with unerring accuracy, but, on the contrary, that they vary and often greatly vary in their ability to provide for their young, in their skill to secure sufficient food, in their wit to avoid danger—in other words, they make blunders and mistakes and involve their progeny and even their colony in ruin. This individual variation in intelligence is brought out very clearly by a patient series of observations made by Drs. G. W. and E. G. Peckham on the special senses of wasps. They not only repeated many of the experiments of Sir John Lubbock, but many new and ingenious experiments were devised. Their studies were for the purpose of investigating the mental power, sense of hearing, color, direction, memory, emotion, power of communication, general intelligence, etc. An interesting result of their painstaking work was the determination of individual differences as to the faculty of memory and power of distinguishing color and direction. This kind of study of the habits of insects has brought to light features of the most surprising character. The remarkable studies of Sir John Lubbock, Dr. Moggridge, and others in Europe, have been paralleled in this country not only by the observations above quoted, but notably by the labors of Rev. H. C. McCook in his studies of the American ants and spiders. In various papers published in the "Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences" and in the "American Naturalist," be has shown many extraordinary and curious features in the life-histories of these animals. The great variety and extent of his work must be my excuse for not referring to it in detail.

Professor G. F. Atkinson, in studying a new species of trap-door