regarding the acts of lower animals, but we may safely assume that one apparent ground or distinction between instinct and reason may be found in the common incompetence of instinct to move out of the beaten track of existence, and in the adaptation of reason, through the teachings of experience, to new and unwonted circumstances.  Let Dr. Carpenter speak as an authority on such a subject.  “The whole nervous system of invertebrated animals, then, may be regarded as ministering entirely to automatic action; and its highest development, as in the class of insects, is coincident with the highest manifestations of the ‘instinctive’ powers, which, when carefully examined, are found to consist entirely in movements of the excito-motor and sensori-motor kinds. (The terms ‘excito-motor’ and ‘sensori-motor’ are applied to nervous actions resulting in movements of varying kinds, and produced by impressions made on nervous centres, but without any necessary emotion, reason, or consciousness.) When we attentively consider the habits of these animals, we find that their actions, though evidently adapted to the attainment of certain ends, are very far from evincing a designed adaptation on the part of the beings that perform them....  For, in the first place, these actions are invariably performed in the same manner by all the individuals of a species, when the conditions are the same; and thus are obviously to be attributed rather to a uniform impulse than to a free choice, the most remarkable example of this being furnished by the economy of bees, wasps, and other ‘social’ insects, in which every individual of the community performs its appropriated part with the exactitude and method of a perfect machine.  The very perfection of the adaptation, again, is often of itself a sufficient evidence of the unreasoning character of the beings which perform the work; for if we attribute it to their own intelligence, we must admit that this intelligence frequently equals, if it does not surpass, that of the most accomplished Human Reasoner.”

Appealing to the most recent observations on ants, we may find evidence of the truth of Dr. Carpenter’s statements, whilst at the same time we may also detect instances of the development of higher powers which are hardly to be classed as “automatic,” and which, in certain species (as in the Ecitons, charmingly described by Mr. Belt in “The Naturalist in Nicaragua"), may be said to be elevated above the common instincts of the race.  Dr. Henry Maudsley has also well summed up the relationship of the acts of these insects to the acts of higher forms, and to new adaptations when he says:  “I do not say that the ant and the bee are entirely destitute of any power of adaptation to new experiences in their lives—­that they are, in fact, purely organized machines, acting always with unvarying regularity; it would appear, indeed, from close observation, that these creatures do sometimes discover in their actions