Sir John Lubbock delivered a very interesting lecture this day
week at the Working Men's College, on the senses and intelligence of animals, pointing out how little we really know of them, and how likely it is that the complex organs of sense in them, richly supplied with nerves for which we have no equivalents, imply a number of sensations and impressions which we never receive, but which may open to them all sorts of experience from which we are excluded. Bat why does Sir John Lubbock appear to think that all the eyes in the universe must be struck by the same number of vibrations in a second before they become sensitive to light, which our eyes require P Surely it is quite conceivable that on one organ of different interior construction, slow vibra- tions might produce the same effect, which very rapid ones produce on a less delicate organ. It seems to us, as we have elsewhere explained, at least quite conceivable that if the organ be more sensitive, a wave of very much less velocity might produce in it the same impressions which a much swifter wave produces on a less delicate sense. Bat the part of Sir john Lubbock's lecture which referred to the difficulty of interpreting the ways and habits of animals, and the manner in which he has often overcome those difficulties, is of the utmost importance, and deserves the most careful consideration of the naturalists of the world.
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