Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/781

Rh due to those educated in those schools, which shows that they were not only incompetent judges, but that they had no criterion of truth, and therefore did not recognize it when it was plainly set before them. The end of this is at hand. The old will be transformed. Metamorphosis is easier than creation. The grub has already entered the chrysalis stage, and the process of transition may be heard by the attentive ear. The custodians know that something serious has happened, but they try to console themselves with the hope that the same old grub will appear with all its essential features unchanged, while the observer of processes knows that when it emerges, its former friends will not identify it, for it will be not only different in form but will be adapted to life in another sphere and to be nourished with a different kind of food, and as soon as the sunlit air has dried out its wings it will surely fly from the grounds of its former protectors, unless they shall provide flowers in the place of leaves.



ROBABLY no subject presents to the psychologist and the physiologist a greater number of unexplored regions than that of the senses and the organs of sense. As yet we do not know how many special senses we possess. To the traditional five are now added the muscular sense, about whose organs there is no little dispute; the temperature sense, including separate end-organs for sensations of heat and cold; and the now problematic sense of equilibrium, whose organs are thought to be the semi-circular canals. Still less is known about the senses of animals. Some of these, as has been shown, are sensitive to colors, sounds, tastes, and odors to which the human sensorium does not react. Most interesting are the patient experiments of Sir John Lubbock, proving that the eyes of ants are sensitive to the ultra-violet rays of light. To them, therefore, even "white" light is not white. "The familiar world which surrounds us" says Lubbock, "may be a totally different place to other animals. To them it may be full of music which we can not hear, of color which we can not see, of sensations which we can not conceive." The presence of doubtful sense organs in animals, such as the muciferous canals of fishes, strikingly suggests the limitations of science; for we not only do not understand these organs, but perhaps never can understand them, as such sensations may be outside the range of our possible experience.