



Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net





_THE CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE SERIES._

EDITED BY HAVELOCK ELLIS.

THE INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS.




THE INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS.

BY

FREDERIC HOUSSAY.


WITH 44 ILLUSTRATIONS.


LONDON:
WALTER SCOTT, LTD.,
24 WARWICK LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW.


1893.




NOTE.


The English edition of this book has been revised throughout and
enlarged, with the author's co-operation. Numerous bibliographical
references have also been added. The illustrations, when not otherwise
stated, are in most cases adapted from Brehm's _Thierleben_.




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION

The naturalists of yesterday and the naturalists of to-day--Natural
history and the natural sciences--The theory of Evolution--The chief
industries of Man--The chief industries of Animals--Intelligence and
instinct--Instinctive actions originate in reflective actions--The
plan of study of the various industries.


CHAPTER II.

HUNTING--FISHING--WARS AND EXPEDITIONS

The Carnivora more skilful hunters than the Herbivora--Different
methods of hunting--Hunting in ambush--The baited ambush--Hunting in
the dwelling or in the burrow--Coursing--Struggles that terminate the
hunt--Hunting with projectiles--Particular circumstances put to
profit--Methods for utilising the captured game--War and
brigandage--Expeditions to acquire slaves--Wars of the ants.


CHAPTER III.

METHODS OF DEFENCE

Flight--Feint--Resistance in common by social animals--Sentinels.


CHAPTER IV.

PROVISIONS AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS

Provisions laid up for a short period--Provisions laid up for a long
period--Animals who construct barns--Physiological reserves--Stages
between physiological reserves and provisions--Animals who submit food
to special treatment in order to facilitate transport--Care bestowed
on harvested provisions--Agricultural ants--Gardening ants--Domestic
animals of ants--Degrees of civilisation in the same species of
ants--Aphis-pens and paddocks--Slavery among ants.


CHAPTER V.

PROVISION FOR REARING THE YOUNG

The preservation of the individual and the preservation of the
species--Foods manufactured by the parents for their young--Species
which obtain for their larvae foods manufactured by others--Carcasses
of animals stored up--Provision of paralysed living animals--The cause
of the paralysis--The sureness of instinct--Similar cases in which the
specific instinct is less powerful and individual initiative
greater--Genera less skilful in the art of paralysing victims.


CHAPTER VI.

DWELLINGS

Animals naturally provided with dwellings--Animals who increase their
natural protection by the addition of foreign bodies--Animals who
establish their home in the natural or artificial dwellings of
others--Classification of artificial shelters--Hollowed
dwellings--Rudimentary burrows--Carefully-disposed burrows--Burrows
with barns adjoined--Dwellings hollowed out in wood--Woven
dwellings--Rudiments of this industry--Dwellings formed of
coarsely-entangled materials--Dwellings woven of flexible
substances--Dwellings woven with greater art--The art of sewing among
birds--Modifications of dwellings according to season and climate--Built
dwellings--Paper nests--Gelatine nests--Constructions built of
earth--Solitary masons--Masons working in association--Individual
skill and reflection--Dwellings built of hard materials united by
mortar--The dams of beavers.


CHAPTER VII.

THE DEFENCE AND SANITATION OF DWELLINGS

General precautions against possible danger--Separation of females while
brooding--Hygienic measures of Bees--Prudence of Bees--Fortifications
of Bees--Precautions against inquisitiveness--Lighting up the nests.


CHAPTER VIII.

CONCLUSION

Degree of perfection in industry independent of zoological
superiority--Mental faculties of the lower animals of like nature to
Man's.


APPENDIX


INDEX




THE INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS.




CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

    THE NATURALISTS OF YESTERDAY AND THE NATURALISTS OF
    TO-DAY--NATURAL HISTORY AND THE NATURAL SCIENCES--THE THEORY
    OF EVOLUTION--THE CHIEF INDUSTRIES OF MAN--THE CHIEF
    INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS--INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT--INSTINCTIVE
    ACTIONS ORIGINATE IN REFLECTIVE ACTIONS--THE PLAN OF STUDY OF
    THE VARIOUS INDUSTRIES.


_The naturalists of yesterday and the naturalists of to-day._--The
study of animals, plants, rocks, and of natural objects generally, was
formerly called "natural history"; but this term is tending to
disappear from our vocabulary and to give place to the term "natural
sciences." What is the reason of this change, and to what does it
correspond? for it is rare for a word to be modified in so short a
time if the thing designated has not itself varied.

Exterior forms have certainly changed, and the naturalist of yesterday
makes upon us the impression of a legendary being. I refer to the
person described in George Sand's romances, marching vigorously over
hills and valleys in search of a rare insect, which he pricked with
delight, or of a plant difficult to reach, which he triumphantly dried
and fixed on a leaf of paper bearing the date of the discovery and the
name of the locality. A herbarium became a sort of journal, recalling
to its fortunate possessor all the wanderings of the happy chase, all
the delightful sounds and sights of the country. Every naturalist
concealed within him a lover of idylls or eclogues. Assuredly all the
preliminary studies which resulted from these excursions were
necessary; we owe gratitude to our predecessors, and we profit from
their labours, sometimes regretting the loss of the picturesque
fashion in which their researches were carried out.

The naturalist of to-day usually lives more in the laboratory than in
the country. Occasional expeditions to the coast or dredgings are the
only links that attach him to nature; the scalpel and the microtome
have replaced the collector's pins, and the magnifying glass gives
place to the microscope. When the observer begins to pursue his
studies in the laboratory he no longer cares to pass the threshold. He
has still so much to learn concerning the most common creatures that
it seems useless to him to waste his time in seeking those that are
rarer, unless he takes into account the unquestionable pleasure of
rambling through woods or along coasts;--but such a consideration does
not belong to the scientific domain.

A change of conditions of this nature does not suffice to create a
science. To take away from a study all that rendered it pleasant and
easy, and to make it the property of a small coterie, when it was
formerly accessible to all, is not sufficient to render it scientific.
It is a fatality rather than a triumph to have undergone such a
change. The change is an effect rather than a cause.

When little or nothing was known it was necessary to begin by
examining the phenomena which first met the eyes of the observer, such
as the customs of animals and the characters which distinguished them
from each other. Their differences and resemblances were studied; they
were formed into groups, classed and arranged in an order recalling as
much as possible their natural relations. In classifying it is
impossible to consider all the facts or the result would be chaos; it
is necessary to choose the characters and to give preponderance to
certain of them. This sorting of characters has been executed with the
sagacity of genius by the illustrious naturalists of the last century
and the beginning of the present. But the frames which they have
traced are fixed and rigid; nature with her infinite plasticity
escapes from them. We render a great homage to the classifiers when we
say that they have confined the facts as closely as it is possible to
do. The catalogues which they have prepared are of a utility which is
unquestionable, although their _role_ is to be useful only; we cannot
pretend to make them the expression, the symbol, the formula in which
all natural phenomena are to be enclosed. To confound classification
with science is to confound the lever with the effect which we expect
from it.

Curiosity, moreover, always impels towards that which is least known.
External appearances having been studied, the form and function of
internal organs were investigated. Physiology and comparative anatomy
were born and developed; researches abounded and observers abandoned
the field for the laboratory.

The difference in methods of research and the pushing of precision to
its extreme limits--an inevitable result of the different nature of
the observations to be made--did not however yet render legitimate the
claim for natural studies to be called "science."

_Natural history and the natural sciences._--A more important event
has taken place. The ancient naturalists, like their contemporaries,
had firm beliefs which they used as unquestionable principles for the
comprehension of all facts. The explanation of an observation was
ready in advance. The study of facts invariably brought to the pen of
the writer the same enthusiastic admiration of the marvellous part
played by Providence in nature.[1] The phenomena in which this action
was not strikingly apparent were merely described without any attempt
to relate them with each other, or with the other facts. A hypothesis
which left a great number of facts without explanation was necessarily
insufficient. The descriptions, in spite of all their individual
interest, did not constitute a homogeneous whole, a science. They were
merely a collection of more or less natural histories.

    [1] See, for example, Reaumur, _Memoires pour l'histoire
        des Insectes_, t. i., pp. 23-25.


Science only begins on the day when we have found the simple theory
which binds together all the facts at that time known, without of
course prejudicing the future. As the number of acquired facts
increases, if the theory in question continues to explain the new as
it explained the old, the science becomes more firmly established. If
we can imagine a time arriving when all the possible phenomena are
known, and the existing hypothesis still explains them, nothing
henceforth can overturn it, the science is completed. That is the
simple case in which a theory has been victorious; but if it is
contradicted by a single well-authenticated fact it must fall or
become modified. The more things a theory explains in the present the
more chance it has of success in the future. It is still only a matter
of chances, for the theory is always at the mercy of unforeseen
observation, which may rudely overthrow it.

There is no theory which must not be modified constantly, at least in
its details. To render it more and more general by successive
improvements is the aim to be pursued. A collection of studies
constitutes a science when a hypothesis has arisen already
sufficiently strong to oblige us to refer to it all new acquisitions,
and to compel us to see if they fortify or oppose it.

It would indeed be a narrow conception if we were to consider as
scientific the partisans of the theory alone; more than anywhere else
discussion is fruitful in the natural sciences; and if it is necessary
to be constantly preoccupied with the general ideas of the day, it is
not at all necessary to adhere to them servilely. The naturalists of
to-day are in possession of a formula with which we must always
preoccupy ourselves; in other words, there are natural sciences.

_The theory of Evolution._--This hypothesis which comes before all
others is the theory of evolution. This is not the place to expound
it, to go over the proofs which have been amassed to build it up, nor
the criticisms which have been directed against it. It has to-day come
out of the struggle victoriously. A prodigious quantity of facts, of
comparative anatomy and of embryology, inexplicable without it, emerge
from the chaos and constitute a whole, truly and marvellously
homogeneous. Issued from the natural sciences, the doctrine of
evolution now overflows them and tends to embrace everything that
concerns man: history, sociology, political economy, psychology. The
moralists seek, and will surely find, compromises permitting ethical
laws to endure the rule of this overwhelming hypothesis.

Without going too far back into history, let us look towards the end
of the last century and the beginning of this. Cuvier, Lamarck,[2] and
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,[3] all preoccupied with general ideas, were
each trying to build up a doctrine. The theory of evolution was born
beneath the pen of Lamarck, but immediately fell under the attacks of
Cuvier.[4] It is to Darwin that the honour belongs of having rescued
it from oblivion and of having initiated the movement which to-day
rules the natural sciences. Studies in embryology and anatomy are
rising without number beneath this impulse; and perhaps it may be said
that these new sciences, so fruitful in results, absorb a little too
much attention and leave in the shade subjects longer known, but
which, however, gain new interest by the way they fit into present
scientific theories.

    [2] _Philosophie zoologique_, 2e edition, Paris, 1830;
        _Histoire des Animaux sans Vertebres_, Introduction, 1835.

    [3] _Philosophie anatomique_, 1818; _Zoologie generale_, 1841.

    [4] _Le Regne Animal_, 1829; _Lecons d'Anatomie comparee_,
        2e edition, 1835-46.

I wish to speak of the manners of animals; the facts regarding them
are of sufficient interest if we consider them one by one, and they
become much more interesting when we attempt to show the close way in
which they are bound together. Volumes would not suffice to exhaust
the subject; but if the entire task is too considerable, I may at
least hope to accomplish a part of it by treating of those facts which
may be brought together under the common title of Animal Industries.
Taken separately, they may be reproached with a certain anecdotal
character, but we cannot fail to agree that taken altogether they
constitute an important chapter in the sciences of life.

_The chief industries of Man._--Let us first throw a rapid glance at
the various stages which the civilisation and industry of Man have
gone through before arriving at their present condition. To make clear
these phases we might either follow the state of civilisation in any
given country by tracing back the course of centuries, or else at a
given epoch find out in different parts of the earth all the stages of
human evolution. The savage men of to-day are not further advanced in
their evolution than our own ancestors who have now gone to fossil.
However it may be, Man, at first frugivorous, as his dentition shows
as well as his zoological affinities, in consequence of a famine of
fruit or from whatever other cause, gradually began to nourish himself
with the flesh of other animals. To search for this fleeing prey
developed in him the art of hunting and fishing. His intelligence,
still feeble, was entirely concentrated on this one point: to seize on
an animal and to feed on it, although neither his nails nor his teeth
nor his muscles make it natural to him. To hunt, to fish, to defend
his territory against the wild beasts who attacked it and himself, to
drive back tribes of his fellows who would diminish his provisions,
these were the first rudiments of the industry of Man. Having become
more skilful, he obtained in an expedition more game than he could
consume at once; he then kept near him living beasts in order to
sacrifice them when hunger came. His reserve of animals increased;
they became accustomed to live near him; and he took care of his
larder. A flock was gradually constituted, and the owner learnt to
profit from all the resources which it offered him, from milk to wool.
Henceforth he became economical with his beasts, and moved about in
order to procure for them abundance of grass and water. He was still
always hunting and fighting; but there were now accessory industries,
and he was especially occupied in the domestication of animals. Then
it happened that he acquired a taste for a graminaceous grain--corn.
To seek the blades one by one is not a very fruitful labour, and
decidedly troublesome. Man collected a supply of them, cultivated
them, possessed fields which he sowed and harvested. He was henceforth
obliged to renounce his herds, which had become immense; for he could
not leave the soil where his corn was ripening, if he wished to gather
it himself, and his cattle were lacking pasture. The number of beasts
diminished; bread had killed milk. Man only kept near him a small
flock capable of feeding on a moderate territory. He abandoned his
temporary shelters, tents of skin or of woven wool, and since he must
henceforth live on the same piece of land, he constructed there a
fixed dwelling. Such is, taken altogether, the genesis of the industry
of the dwelling connected with the culture of the soil; to earlier
periods corresponded the natural or hollowed cave and the woven tent.

_The chief industries of Animals._--In a more or less perfect degree
we find the same industries among animals generally. In order to make
just comparisons, we ought especially to consider the methods of those
who are not endowed with specially appropriated organs, for in this
case their task is rendered too simple. To take an example. The Lion
is certainly an incomparable hunter; but his whole organisation tends
to facilitate the capture of living prey. His agility and the strength
of his muscles enable him to seize it at the first leap before it can
escape. With his sharp claws he holds it; his teeth are so keen and
his jaw so strong that he kills it immediately; with such natural
advantages what need has he of ingenuity? But in the case of the Wolf
or the Fox it is quite another matter; they hunt with a veritable art
which Man himself has not disdained, since he has taken as his
associate