THE ZOOLOGIST
No. 723.—September, 1901.
BIOLOGICAL SUGGESTIONS.
ANIMAL SENSE PERCEPTIONS.
By W. L. Distant.
Whether Bees are susceptible of feeling and capable of thought is a question which cannot be dogmatically answered.—Huxley.
It is indeed still not infrequently the custom to deny absolutely to the lower animals reason and religion.—Haeckel.
It is, I think, generally assumed not only that the world really exists as we see it, but that it appears to other animals pretty much as it does to us. A little consideration, however, is sufficient to show that this is very far from being certain, or even probable.—Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock).
Underlying all our conceptions of Animal Mimicry and Protective Resemblance is the predicate that other animals see the various objects of nature in similar size, shape, and colour as we do ourselves; in other words, that, though the sensory organs of sight may vary, the practical result is still identical. The same remark applies in a general way to a belief in a more or less universal and similar sensation of touch, smell, taste, and hearing, though on examination it is surprising to find how little positive information exists to warrant the conclusion, even though it may be an absolute fact. If Berkeley asked the old materialistic philosophers whether they could prove the existence of a material world external to the mind, may we not also ask for some more definite proof of the unity and similarity in the sense perception
