ANIMALS IN SOOIETY.
MR. KIPLING, in his "Jungle Book," has amused him- self and delighted his readers by constructing a wild-beast society living in the woods, true in habits to the instincts each of its kind, but recognising a sort of social obligation, laws, and customs which are inherited, discussed, enforced, or remitted by the collective wisdom of the creatures themselves. The effect is perfectly convincing, and there is no sense of incongruity or make-believe in reading these chapters, partly because of the art with which they are written, but partly because the real life of the jungle creatures is itself so intelligent and intelligible that it seems perfectly rational to find that they have progressed a step further, and formed themselves into a society whose members play parts subordinate to some generally understood law. The wonder is not that they should do so, but that they should not. Yet it is on the whole true of the higher individual intelligences among animals, that, properly speaking, they do not live in society at all. They live in association ; but that is a different matter, often the result of chance, — such as travelling on the same lines of migration, or asso- ciating where food is present in unusual abundance. But that is quite a different matter from society as we Anderstand society, which is association for reciprocal benefit, and nearly always results in some form of division of labour and separation of classes. The appearance of social life in the case of all the ruminant animals, deer, wild cattle, antelopes, and wild sheep, is somewhat misleading. They are nearly always seen together in herds, and the association is voluntary. But through the ages that they have thus associated they have made no progress in their manner of life, and have not developed the least tendency towards forming the rudiments of "community." The explanation of this is probably to be found in the motive which makes them gregarious. Apart from a liking for "company" which they all share, the main motive for their assembling together is fear, sentiment peu f6cond en prop.' es, as M. George Leroy remarks in his " Lettres Sur les Animaux." Among these animals it has developed only one social device, the habitual placing of sentinels, whose place is taken in turn by members of the herd. It is division of labour, and shows that the idea is understood by them. But it has never been carried further.
On the other hand, it may be doubted whether those large gregarious animals have any sufficient motive for progress at all. Their life consists in the daily repetition of a few actions which satisfy all their wants, they develop no new ones, and for them life may perhaps have reached perfec- tion. One rather curious exception to this extreme simplicity and incompleteness of the "society" of the deer tribe is noted by Lord Lovat, in his essays on "The Highland Deer" in the "Badminton Library." Large stags are often attended by a smaller stag, who acts as a kind of servant and humble companion to the big beast. "In sheep-ground, or where there are few deer," writes Lord Lovat, "a big stag is seldom found quite alone ; he has a small one as his slave. This little fellow has to do all the dirty work—in fact, fag for his master. The old gentleman lies snug in a hole out of the wind, or sheltered from the flies ; the slave has to lie out on the hillock, where he can see; and if, trusting to the old fellow being asleep, he looks out for a snug corner for himself, woe betide him if his master catches him. In an instant he rushes out upon his fag, and drives him back to his post. Then if there is any doubt as to the safety of the road, the little stag has to go on in front, driven on by the horns or fore feet of the big one." Slavery is one of the early developments of the social in- stinct in man, so the " fagging " instinct in the Highland stag must be credited to it as a sign of progress. On the other hand, the same high authority who has recorded this selfish instinct in the stag, hastens to add an anecdote of another character, which shows that deer have a sense of obligation in society which is probably more common among animals than is believed. "Sometimes an old stag takes compassion upon a youngster. The writer saw a pretty instance of this on the West coast in the season of 1885. Three stags had been moved in a young plantation. The two best jumped the three-foot wire fence, but the third, a two-year-old stag, got frightened, and refused. The two waited for him for some time, while he walked and ran up and down ; at last the larger of the two— a good royal—came back to the fence. The little one ran towards him, and the royal trotted away ; but no, the little one could not make up his mind to jump. Back came the royal over the fence, went close up to the little fellow, and actually kissed hirn several times. With the glass, not five hundred yards away, we could see them rub their noses together. Then. the royal led down to the fence, but still the little stag would not have it. At last the royal tossed his head in the air, and seeming to say 'Well, you are a fool,' went off up the hill to join his com- panion. When out of sight the little one took courage, got over the fence with a scramble, and followed." An animal which has the slave-using instinct, and the instinct of sympathy, and desires to give practical aid to another, evidently possesses the necessary intelligence for developing a more complex form of society than that in which deer now live. The pro- bable reason that it does not do so is that which has been already suggested—that their life is already perfect, for them, and needs no improvements, This is partly corroborated by the greater development of common organisation in creatures of far lower intelligence—the common wild-rabbits. Experi- ence seems to have taught them that they are far safer when avoiding their enemies underground than on the surface, and that the chances of escape from a stoat or weazel are greater when numbers of burrows are combined into a labyrinth of passages, than if each had a separate and disconnected bur- row. It is evident that the food supply would be larger and more lasting if they lived apart; yet they always prefer to unite in colonies, and the combined dwellings of the rabbit must be looked upon as the result of a genuine social instinct. Most rodents are singularly stupid creatures indi- vidually, yet in another of the class, the beaver, the social instinct is seen in by far the most complete development known among the higher animals. The work of the beaver colony, apart from the astonishing engineering skill and knowledge of the use of different material it displays, their employment of water transport, and their control and retention, as a means of protection, of streams and ponds, is alike in motive and purpose as perfect an example of common and organised labour for a common good, as the associated labour by which the population of Holland maintain the dykes and dams. The whole beaver village works at the dam, and the equally wonderful, though less known, engineering device of the beaver canal, to which logs are rolled, and then towed up to the "lodges," is the joint work of the colony. When this is made, and the requisite area of deep water secured by the dam, the families work separately at private
house-building. Thus the distinction between public and private duties is recognised and maintained.
Yet this single instance of a highly organised society among creatures of high development is so far exceeded by the social life of insects, that the problem of instinct seems for the moment beyond solution, If deer and antelopes do not make progress because their wants are already satisfied, on what theory can we account for the divisions and subdivisions of social functions in nests of crawling ants P Take, for example, the Amazon ants. Their homes are filled with slaves, and the master-ant has lost not only the desire to work, but even the habit of feeding itself, so that it would die of hunger beside a pile of sugar if a grey ant were not there to put it into its mouth. "Among the Amazons the slaves undertake every labour; it is they who build, and who carry the young for their masters. They bring them food, clean them, and carry them from place to place, if there is need to emigrate. The masters, by losing interest in work, lose also their votes when it is a question of taking a resolution concerning the whole colony. The servants act on their own initiative and their own responsi- bility, and even in grave concerns, such as emigration, the idle masters do not seem to be consulted." The divisions of insects into castes of fighters and workers seems in some instances due to sexual difference, as in the case of bees and hornets. But this does not explain the subsequent appor- tioning of the tasks of each in the common interests of the society. Who directs that one set of bees shall go abroad to fetch honey, another set wait to receive and clean them on the platform at the mouth of the hive, and a third body guard the entrance against robbers ? Yet the working of this organised system can be watched wherever a beehive is inhabited in an English garden. The "gardening ants," which collect pieces of vegetable, and pile them up to rot in the dark interior of their nests until they are covered with a kind of fungus, on which the ants live, make a walled street, partly roofed, up to the plant whose leaves they propose to cut, and divide the labour according to the size of the workers. The largest act as road.
menders, and repair the "permanent way" when it becomes injured by traffic. The next in size cut the leaves and carry
them, and the very small ants fuss around, and being unable to cut leaves, get in the way, and are sometimes carried them- selves on a leaf in whose transportation they are anxio as to
assist. The mechanical societies of these insects are wholly beyond explanation. The analogies of reason which hold good in the case of the higher animals must fail when applied to any theory of rational development in the ant and bee. Their instinct is born fully developed, whereas in the higher animals there is at least the rational attribute, that though they do not progress as a class, individuals do occasionally develop social tendencies which are analogous with our own.
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