The insects certainly live in a wonderland of which we have little
conception. All our powers are tremendously exaggerated in these little
people. Their power makes them acquainted with the inner molecular
constitution of matter far more intimately than we can attain to by our
coarse chemical analysis. Our world is agitated by vibrations, coarse
and fine, of which our senses can take in only the slower ones. If they
exceed three thousand a second, they become too shrill for our ears. It
is thought that the world of sound with the insects begins where ours
leaves off. The drums and tubes of insects' ears are very minute. What
would to us be a continuous sound is to them a series of separate blows.
We begin to hear blows as continuous sounds when they amount to about
thirty a second. The house-fly has about four thousand eye-lenses; the
cabbage butterfly, and the dragon-fly, about seventeen thousand; and
some species of beetles have twenty-five thousand. We cannot begin to
think in what an agitated world the insect lives, thrilling and
vibrating to a degree that would drive us insane. If we possessed the
same microscopic gifts, how would the aspect of the world be changed! We
might see a puff of smoke as a flock of small blue butterflies, or hear
the hum of a mosquito as the blast of a trumpet. On the other hand, so
much that disturbs us must escape the insects, because their senses are
too fine to take it in. Doubtless they do not hear the thunder or feel
the earthquake.
The insects are much more sensitive to heat and cold than we are, and
for reasons. The number of waves in the ether that gives us the
sensation of heat is three or four million millions a second. The number
of tremors required to produce red light is estimated at four hundred
and seventy-four million millions a second, and for the production of
violet light, six hundred and ninety-nine million millions a second. No
doubt the insects react to all these different degrees of vibration.
Those marvelous instruments called antennæ seem to put them in touch
with a world of which we are quite oblivious.
X
To how many things our lives have been compared!--to a voyage, with its
storms and adverse currents and safe haven at last; to a day with its
morning, noon, and night; to the seasons with their spring, summer,
autumn, and winter; to a game, a school, a battle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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