Sitting on this little rounded boss of gneiss beside the path which cuts obliquely1 through the meadow, I am engaged in watching a brigade of ants out on foraging2 duty, and intent on securing for the nest three whole segments of a deceased earthworm. They look for all the world like those busy companies one sees in the Egyptian wall-paintings, dragging home a huge granite3 colossus by sheer force of bone and sinew. Every muscle in their tiny bodies is strained to the utmost as they prise themselves laboriously4 against the great boulders5 which strew6 the path, and which are known to our Brobdingnagian intelligence as grains of sand. Besides the workers themselves, a whole battalion7 of stragglers runs to and fro upon the broad line which leads to the head-quarters of the community. The province of these stragglers, who seem so busy doing nothing, probably consists in keeping communications open, and encouraging the sturdy pullers by occasional relays of fresh workmen. I often wish that I could for a while get inside those tiny brains, and see, or rather smell, the world as ants do. For there can be little doubt that to these brave little carnivores here the universe is chiefly known as a collective bundle of odours, simultaneous or consecutive8. As our world is mainly a world of visible objects, theirs, I believe, is mainly a world of olfactible things.
In the head of every one of these little creatures is something that we may fairly call a brain. Of course most insects have no real brains; the nerve-substance in their heads is a mere9 collection of ill-arranged ganglia, directly connected with their organs of sense. Whatever man may be, an earwig at least is a conscious, or rather a semi-conscious, automaton10. He has just a few knots of nerve-cells in his little pate11, each of which leads straight from his dim eye or his vague ear or his indefinite organs of taste; and his muscles obey the promptings of external sensations without possibility of hesitation12 or consideration, as mechanically as the valve of a steam-engine obeys the governor-balls. You may say of him truly, 'Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu;' and you need not even add the Leibnitzian saving clause, 'nisi ipse intellectus;' for the poor soul's intellect is wholly deficient13, and the senses alone make up all that there is of him, subjectively14 considered. But it is not so with the highest insects. They have something which truly answers to the real brain of men, apes, and dogs, to the cerebral15 hemispheres and the cerebellum which are superadded in us mammals upon the simple sense-centres of lower creatures. Besides the eye, with its optic nerve and optic perceptive16 organs—besides the ear, with its similar mechanism—we mammalian lords of creation have a higher and more genuine brain, which collects and compares the information given to the senses, and sends down the appropriate messages to the muscles accordingly. Now, bees and flies and ants have got much the same sort of arrangement, on a smaller scale, within their tiny heads. On top of the little knots which do duty as nerve-centres for their eyes and mouths, stand two stalked bits of nervous matter, whose duty is analogous17 to that of our own brains. And that is why these three sorts of insects think and reason so much more intellectually than beetles18 or butterflies, and why the larger part of them have organised their domestic arrangements on such an excellent co-operative plan.
We know well enough what forms the main material of thought with bees and flies, and that is visible objects. For you must think about something if you think at all; and you can hardly imagine a contemplative blow-fly setting itself down to reflect, like a Hindu devotee, on the syllable19 Om, or on the oneness of existence. Abstract ideas are not likely to play a large part in apian consciousness. A bee has a very perfect eye, and with this eye it can see not only form, but also colour, as Sir John Lubbock's experiments have shown us. The information which it gets through its eye, coupled with other ideas derived20 from touch, smell, and taste, no doubt makes up the main thinkable and knowable universe as it reveals itself to the apian intelligence. To ourselves and to bees alike the world is, on the whole, a coloured picture, with the notions of distance and solidity thrown in by touch and muscular effort; but sight undoubtedly21 plays the first part in forming our total conception of things generally.
What, however, forms the thinkable universe of these little ants running to and fro so eagerly at my feet? That is a question which used long to puzzle me in my afternoon walks. The ant has a brain and an intelligence, but that brain and that intelligence must have been developed out of something. Ex nihilo nihil fit. You cannot think and know if you have nothing to think about. The intelligence of the bee and the fly was evolved in the course of their flying about and looking at things: the more they flew, and the more they saw, the more they knew; and the more brain they got to think with. But the ant does not generally fly, and, as with most comparatively unlocomotive animals, its sight is bad. True, the winged males and females have retained in part the usual sharp eyes of their class—for they are first cousins to the bees—and they also possess three little eyelets or ocelli, which are wanting to the wingless neuters. Without these they would never have found one another in their courtship, and they would have run their heads against the nearest tree, or rushed down the gaping22 throat of the first expectant swallow, and so effectually extinguished their race. Flying animals cannot do without eyes, and they always possess the most highly developed vision of any living creatures. But the wingless neuters are almost blind—in some species quite so; and Sir John Lubbock has shown that their appreciation23 of colour is mostly confined to an aversion to red light, and a comparative endurance of blue. Moreover, they are apparently24 deaf, and most of their other senses seem little developed. What can be the raw material on which that pin's head of a brain sets itself working? For, small as it is, it is a wonderful organ of intellect; and though Sir John Lubbock has shown us all too decisively that the originality25 and inventive genius of ants have been sadly overrated by Solomon and others, yet Darwin is probably right none the less in saying that no more marvellous atom of matter exists in the universe than this same wee lump of microscopic26 nerve substance.
My dog Grip, running about on the path there, with his nose to the ground, and sniffing27 at every stick and stone he meets on his way, gives us the clue to solve the problem. Grip, as Professor Croom Robertson suggests, seems capable of extracting a separate and distinguishable smell from everything. I have only to shy a stone on the beach among a thousand other stones, and my dog, like a well-bred retriever as he is, selects and brings back to me that individual stone from all the stones around, by exercise of his nose alone. It is plain that Grip's world is not merely a world of sights, but a world of smells as well. He not only smells smells, but he remembers smells, he thinks smells, he even dreams smells, as you may see by his sniffing and growling28 in his sleep. Now, if I were to cut open Grip's head (which heaven forfend), I should find in it a correspondingly big smell-nerve and smell-centre—an olfactory29 lobe30, as the anatomists say. All the accumulated nasal experiences of his ancestors have made that lobe enormously developed. But in a man's head you would find a very large and fine optic centre, and only a mere shrivelled relic31 to represent the olfactory lobes32. You and I and our ancestors have had but little occasion for sniffing and scenting34; our sight and our touch have done duty as chief intelligencers from the outer world; and the nerves of smell, with their connected centres, have withered35 away to the degenerate36 condition in which they now are. Consequently, smell plays but a small part in our thought and our memories. The world that we know is chiefly a world of sights and touches. But in the brain of dog, or deer, or antelope37, smell is a prevailing38 faculty39; it colours all their ideas, and it has innumerable nervous connections with every part of their brain. The big olfactory lobes are in direct communication with a thousand other nerves; odours rouse trains of thought or powerful emotions in their minds just as visible objects do in our own.
Now, in the dog or the horse sight and smell are equally developed; so that they probably think of most things about equally in terms of each. In ourselves, sight is highly developed, and smell is a mere relic; so that we think of most things in terms of sight alone, and only rarely, as with a rose or a lily, in terms of both. But in ants, on the contrary, smell is highly developed and sight a mere relic; so that they probably think of most things as smellable only, and very little as visible in form or colour. Dr. Bastian has shown that bees and butterflies are largely guided by scent33; and though he is certainly wrong in supposing that sight has little to do with leading them to flowers (for if you cut off the bright-coloured corolla they will never discover the mutilated blossoms, even when they visit others on the same plant), yet the mere fact that so many flowers are scented40 is by itself enough to show that perfume has a great deal to do with the matter. In wingless ants, while the eyes have undergone degeneration, this high sense of smell has been continued and further developed, till it has become their principal sense-endowment, and the chief raw material of their intelligence. Their active little brains are almost wholly engaged in correlating and co-ordinating smells with actions. Their olfactory nerves give them nearly all the information they can gain about the external world, and their brains take in this information and work out the proper movements which it indicates. By smell they find their way about and carry on the business of their lives. Just as you and I know the road from Regent's Circus to Pall41 Mall by visible signs of the street-corners and the Duke of York's Column, so these little ants know the way from the nest to the corpse42 of the dismembered worm by observing and remembering the smells which they met with on their way. See: I obliterate43 the track for an inch or two with my stick, and the little creatures go beside themselves with astonishment44 and dismay. They rush about wildly, inquiring of one another with their antenn? whether this is really Doomsday, and whether the whole course of nature has been suddenly revolutionised. Then, after a short consultation45, they determine upon action; and every ant starts off in a different direction to hunt the lost track, head to the ground, exactly as a pointer hunts the missing trail of a bird or hare. Each ventures an inch or so off, and then runs back to find the rest, for fear he should get isolated46 altogether. At last, after many failures, one lucky fellow hits upon the well-remembered train of scents47, and rushes back leaving smell-tracks no doubt upon the soil behind him. The message goes quickly round from post to post, each sentry48 making passes with his antenn? to the next picket49, and so sending on the news to the main body in the rear. Within five minutes communications are re-established, and the precious bit of worm-meat continues triumphantly50 on its way along the recovered path. An ingenious writer would even have us believe that ants possess a scent-language of their own, and emit various odours from their antenn? which the other ants perceive with theirs, and recognise as distinct in meaning. Be this as it may, you cannot doubt, if you watch them long, that scents and scents alone form the chief means by which they recollect51 and know one another, or the external objects with which they come in contact. The whole universe is clearly to them a complicated picture made up entirely52 of infinite interfusing smells.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
obliquely
|
|
| adv.斜； 倾斜； 间接； 不光明正大 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
foraging
|
|
| v.搜寻（食物），尤指动物觅（食）( forage的现在分词 )；（尤指用手）搜寻（东西） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
granite
|
|
| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
laboriously
|
|
| adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
boulders
|
|
| n.卵石( boulder的名词复数 )；巨砾；（受水或天气侵蚀而成的）巨石；漂砾 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
strew
|
|
| vt.撒；使散落；撒在…上，散布于 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
battalion
|
|
| n.营；部队；大队(的人) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
consecutive
|
|
| adj.连续的，联贯的，始终一贯的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
mere
|
|
| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
automaton
|
|
| n.自动机器，机器人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
pate
|
|
| n.头顶；光顶 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
hesitation
|
|
| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
deficient
|
|
| adj.不足的，不充份的，有缺陷的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
subjectively
|
|
| 主观地； 臆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
cerebral
|
|
| adj.脑的，大脑的；有智力的，理智型的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
perceptive
|
|
| adj.知觉的，有洞察力的，感知的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
analogous
|
|
| adj.相似的；类似的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
beetles
|
|
| n.甲虫( beetle的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
syllable
|
|
| n.音节；vt.分音节 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
derived
|
|
| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
undoubtedly
|
|
| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
gaping
|
|
| adj.口的；张口的；敞口的；多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 )；张开，张大 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
appreciation
|
|
| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
apparently
|
|
| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
originality
|
|
| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
microscopic
|
|
| adj.微小的，细微的，极小的，显微的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
sniffing
|
|
| n.探查法v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的现在分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
growling
|
|
| n.吠声, 咆哮声 v.怒吠, 咆哮, 吼 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
olfactory
|
|
| adj.嗅觉的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
lobe
|
|
| n.耳垂，（肺，肝等的）叶 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
relic
|
|
| n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
lobes
|
|
| n.耳垂( lobe的名词复数 )；（器官的）叶；肺叶；脑叶 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
scent
|
|
| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
scenting
|
|
| vt.闻到（scent的现在分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
withered
|
|
| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
degenerate
|
|
| v.退步，堕落；adj.退步的，堕落的；n.堕落者 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
antelope
|
|
| n.羚羊；羚羊皮 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
prevailing
|
|
| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
faculty
|
|
| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
scented
|
|
| adj.有香味的；洒香水的；有气味的v.嗅到(scent的过去分词) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
pall
|
|
| v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
corpse
|
|
| n.尸体，死尸 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
obliterate
|
|
| v.擦去，涂抹，去掉...痕迹，消失，除去 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
astonishment
|
|
| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
consultation
|
|
| n.咨询；商量；商议；会议 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
isolated
|
|
| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
scents
|
|
| n.香水( scent的名词复数 )；气味；（动物的）臭迹；（尤指狗的）嗅觉 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
sentry
|
|
| n.哨兵，警卫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
picket
|
|
| n.纠察队；警戒哨；v.设置纠察线；布置警卫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
triumphantly
|
|
| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
recollect
|
|
| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
entirely
|
|
| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |