Show DRUNKENNESS AMONG INSECTS Recent Observation Among Scientists The question has frequently been asked by laymen as well as scientists to what extent if any are the habits and sensations that we associate with the higher animals especially man apart a-part of the being also of the lower organisms or-ganisms In the earlier days of the cultivation of natural history and one need hardly go farther back than 50 years the distinction between man and other animated organisms was considered consid-ered to be so finely and absolutely marked as to lead to an almost complete com-plete divorce of his sensations and perceptions per-ceptions from those of all other living matter he was endowed with special attributes which belonged nowhere else he was possessed of a faculty and reasoning power which were denied toils to-ils less favored associates of the living liv-ing world he alone had real intelligence intelli-gence while everything below him had as the highest expression of will only instinct In the classifications of a somewhat earlier period he was considered con-sidered the type distinctive of man while everything below him in organization organi-zation was animal The great majority of the nonscientific thinking world perhaps even today reflect the minds of the older naturalists and surely they did before the great revolution in thought which followed within a few years the appearance in 1859 of Mr arwins epochmaking work The Origin of Species From that time on an almost endless series of facts have been gathered by busy observers upon the habits and mental qualities of animals ani-mals only to prove that mans isola tion is only a comparative one and that what he possesses and exercises mentally is similarly possessed although though in an inferior degree by organisms or-ganisms which progressively descend lower and lower in the animal series Instinct and intelligence are proper ties that belong to both high and low natural Jove the sense of shame or remorse re-morse and the esthetic appreciation of Lenin and color are likewise qualities that in one form or another find expression ex-pression with both classes and eveh that most morbid sensethe sense that sees the proper termination to lifes turmoils in suicidehas been shown by Lloyd Morgan and others to flnd its development among certain animals ani-mals the spiders and scorpions for example The latest contribution toj J I the personal habits of animals has just been made by M J Lloyd Williams and curiously enough It deals with the drunken habits of certain bumble bum-ble bees He shows that these insects in frequenting the crowded flowers of some of the composites as cardnus and centaurea and of a species of scabiosa become infected with their I honey to a state of intoxication by I rolling on the back striking the legs I wildly in the air and general helplessness helpless-ness The bees rapidly recover from these effects but strange though it may appear they eagerly renew the debauch One individual however as Mr Williams informs us manifested the next morning a praiseworthy remorse re-morse and disgust raising its head and forelegs as high as it could above the plants then precipitately hurrying away as soon as released The most delicate species was a neuter bee of the species bombus lapidarius A HEILPRIN |