Abstract
COMPARATIVE psychology as a science is beset with more difficulties than most of its kindred natural sciences. One of the greatest of these difficulties is that man, a creature gifted with the most highly developed intelligence, endeavours to interpret and explain the actions of the lesser intellectually en-dowed members of the animal kingdom from their standpoint. However much he may endeavour to avoid assuming an anthropocentric attitude, he must invariably find himself seated again on his pedestal of intellectual preeminence. He cannot avoid it; it is the only criterion he possesses. This difficulty is never more apparent than when an effort is made to study the manifold activities of that most active of the animal groups, the insects, and especially those families in which social habits have attained such a high state of perfection. In the study of the senses of insects we are necessarily compelled to form inferences from our own sensory experiences, and the result is that we not only cannot obtain an adequate conception of their ordinary sensory powers, but are completely baffled by many organs of an undoubted sensory nature.
The Senses of Insects.
By Auguste Forel. Translated by Macleod Yearsley. Pp. xvi + 324; two plates. (London: Methuen and Co., n.d.) Price 10s. 6d. net.
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HEWITT, C. The Senses of Insects . Nature 78, 506 (1908). https://doi.org/10.1038/078506a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/078506a0
