these sounds are so feeble or so high in pitch that they are rarely heard by us. Certain butterflies make an odd clicking sound, as do some of the water-beetles. In Japan,

where small things which are beautiful are prized not less than large ones, singing insects are kept in cages and highly valued, so that their capture becomes a lucrative industry, just as it is with song birds in Europe and America. Among the many species of Japanese singing insects is a night cricket, known as the bridle-bit insect, because its note resembles the jingling of a bridle-bit.

124. The sense of sight.-Not all animals have eyes. The moles which live underground, insects, and other animals that live in caves, and the deep-sea fishes which live in waters so deep that the light of the sun never comes to them, have no eyes at all, or have eyes of so rudimentary a character that they can no longer be used for seeing. But all these eyeless animals have no eyes because they live under conditions where eyes are useless. They have lost their eyes by degeneration. There are, however, many animals that have no eyes, nor have they or their ancestors ever had eyes. These are the simplest, most lowly organized animals. Many, perhaps all eyeless animals are, however, capable of distinguishing light from darkness. They are sensitive to light. An investigator placed several individuals of the common, tiny fresh-water polyp (Hydra) in a glass cylinder the walls of which were painted black. He left a small part of the cylinder unpainted, and in this part of the cylinder where the light penetrated the Hydras all gathered. The eyeless maggots or larvæ of flies, when placed in the light will wriggle and squirm away into dark crevices. They are conscious of light when exposed to it, and endeavor to shun it. Most plants turn their leaves toward the light; the sunflowers turn on their stems to face the sun. Light seems to stimulate organisms whether they have eyes or not, and the organisms either try to get into the light or to avoid it. But this is not seeing.

The simplest eyes, if we may call them eyes, are not capable of forming an image or picture of external objects. They only make the animal better capable of distinguishing between light and darkness or shadow. Many lowly organized animals, as some polyps, and worms, have certain cells of the skin specially provided with pigment. These cells grouped together form what is called a pigment fleck, which can, because of the presence of the pigment, absorb more light than the skin cells, and are more sensitive to the light. By such pigment-flecks, or eye-spots, the animal can detect, by their shadows, the passing near them of moving bodies, and thus be in some measure informed of the approach of enemies or of prey. Some of these eye-flecks are provided, not simply with pigment, but with a simple sort of lens that serves to concentrate rays of light and

nal objects more or less nearly complete and perfect can be formed. There is great variety in the finer structure of these picture-forming eyes, but each consists essentially of an inner delicate or sensitive nervous surface called the retina, which is stimulated by light, and is connected with the brain by a large optic nerve, and of a transparent lightrefracting lens lying outside of the retina and exposed to the light. These are the constant essential parts of an image-forming and image-perceiving eye. In most eyes there are other accessory parts which may make the whole

eye an organ of excessively complicated structure and of remarkably perfect seeing capacity. Our own eyes are organs of extreme structural complexity and of high development, although some of the other vertebrates have undoubtedly a keener and more nearly perfected sight.

The crustaceans and insects have eyes of a peculiar character called compound eyes. In addition most insects have smaller simple eyes. Each of the compound eyes is composed of many (from a few, as in certain ants, to as many as twenty-five thousand, as in certain beetles) eye elements, each eye element seeing independently of the other eye elements and seeing only a very small part of any object in front of the whole eye. All these small parts of the external object seen by the many distinct eye elements are combined so as to form an image in mosaic-that is, made up of separate small parts-of the external object. If the head of a dragon-fly be exam

ined, it will be seen that

two thirds or more of the

FIG. 151.-A dragon-fly, showing the large compound eyes on the head.

FIG. 152.-Some of the facets of the compound eye of a dragon-fly.

whole head is made up of the two large compound eyes (Fig. 151), and with a lens it may be seen that the outer surface of each of these eyes is composed of many small spaces or facets (Fig. 152) which are the outer lenses of the many eye elements composing the whole eye.

CHAPTER XIV

INSTINCT AND REASON

125. Irritability.-All animals of whatever degree of organization show in life the quality of irritability or response to external stimulus. Contact with external things produces some effect on each of them, and this effect is something more than the mere mechanical effect on the matter of which the animal is composed. In the onecelled animals the functions of response to external stimulus are not localized. They are the property of any part of the protoplasm of the body. Just as breathing or digestion is a function of the whole cell, so are sensation and response in action. In the higher or many-celled animals each of these functions is specialized and localized. A certain set of cells is set apart for each function, and each organ or series of cells is released from all functions save its own.

126. Nerve cells and fibers.-In the development of the individual animal certain cells from the primitive external layer or ectoblast of the embryo are set apart to preside over the relations of the creature to its environment. These cells are highly specialized, and while some of them are highly sensitive, others are adapted for carrying or transmitting the stimuli received by the sensitive cells, and still others have the function of receiving sense-impressions and of translating them into impulses of motion. nerve cells are receivers of impressions. These are gathered together in nerve masses or ganglia, the largest of these being known as the brain, the ganglia in general being known as nerve centers. The nerves are of two classes.

The

The one class, called sensory nerves, extends from the skin or other organ of sensation to the nerve center. The nerves of the other class, motor nerves, carry impulses to motion.

127. The brain or sensorium.-The brain or other nerve center sits in darkness surrounded by a bony protecting box. To this main nerve center, or sensorium, come the nerves from all parts of the body that have sensation, the external skin as well as the special organs of sight, hearing, taste, smell. With these come nerves bearing sensations of pain, temperature, muscular effort-all kinds of sensation which the brain can receive. These nerves are the sole sources of knowledge to any animal organism. Whatever idea its brain may contain must be built up through these nerve impressions. The aggregate of these impressions constitute the world as the organism knows it. All sensation is related to action. If an organism is not to act, it can not feel, and the intensity of its feeling is related to its power to act.

128. Reflex action. These impressions brought to the brain by the sensory nerves represent in some degree the facts in the animal's environment. They teach something as to its food or its safety. The power of locomotion is characteristic of animals. If they move, their actions must depend on the indications carried to the nerve center from the outside; if they feed on living organisms, they must seek their food; if, as in many cases, other living organisms prey on them, they must bestir themselves to escape. The impulse of hunger on the one hand and of fear on the other are elemental. The sensorium receives an impression that food exists in a certain direction. At once an impulse to motion is sent out from it to the muscles necessary to move the body in that direction. In the higher animals these movements are more rapid and more exact. This is because organs of sense, muscles, nerve fibers, and nerve cells are all alike highly specialized. In the star-fish the sensation is slow, the muscular response sluggish, but the