Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/48

 of at least half a mile to procure the kind of fly, the Motúca (Hadaüs lepidotus), with which it provisions its cell. I often noticed it to take a few turns in the air round the place before starting; on its return it made without hesitation straight for the closed mouth of the mine. I was convinced that the insects noted the bearings of their nests and the direction they took in flying from them. The proceeding in this and similar cases (I have read of something analogous having been noticed in hive bees) seems to be a mental act of the same nature as that which takes place in ourselves when recognising a locality. The senses, however, must be immeasurably more keen and the mental operation much more certain in them than it is in man; for to my eye there was absolutely no land-mark on the even surface of sand which could serve as guide, and the borders of the forest were not nearer than half a mile. The action of the wasp would be said to be instinctive; but it seems plain that the instinct is no mysterious and unintelligible agent, but a mental process in each individual, differing from the same in man only by its unerring certainty. The mind of the insect appears to be so constituted that the impression of external objects or the want felt, causes it to act with a precision which seems to us like that of a machine constructed to move in a certain given way. I have noticed in Indian boys a sense of locality almost as keen as that possessed by the sand-wasp. An old Portuguese and myself, accompanied by a young lad about ten years of age, were once lost in the forest in a most solitary place on the banks of the main river. Our case seemed hopeless,