Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 21.djvu/115

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SKETCH OF SIR JOHN LUBBOCK, BART, M. P.
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of the Royal, Linnæan, and other learned societies. Relative to these subjects he has published an elaborate treatise on one of the obscure groups of insects, entitled a "Monograph of the Thysanura and Collembola" (Royal Society, 1873), and works of a more popular character on the "Origin and Metamorphoses of Insects" and "Wild Flowers considered in Relation to Insects," in the latter of which he considers the agency of insects in the fertilization of flowers by carrying pollen from flower to flower while in search of food, and the adaptation of the flowers to the function of dusting the insects that visit them with their pollen and to the reception of the pollen of other flowers from them. His most recent researches, carried on with the aid of members of his family, have been devoted to the observation of the habits of insects, particularly of wasps, bees, and ants, which have been attended with important discoveries. He has given particular attention to the study of the mental faculties of insects, whether those creatures have any, and to what extent they may be developed, and has made numerous interesting communications on the subject to the British Association and the Royal Institution, which have been extensively published, even in miscellaneous journals, and generally read; and in connection with this branch he was able to interest the British Association with the life-history of a pet wasp which he kept, to such an extent that its death in the following year was considered worthy of notice in a special paragraph in "Nature." Among the consequences of these publications have been the direction of a greater degree of attention to the biological history of the orders that form the subjects of them, and a higher appreciation of the study of little things.

Sir John Lubbock also became an active and eminent student of archæology. He examined the shell-mounds, or kitchen-middens, on the coast of Denmark, to which attention had originally been called by Steenstrup and other Danish antiquaries, and was the first to make English readers acquainted with those rude relics of the ancient Scandinavian savages. He also studied the gravels of the Somme from Amiens to the sea, in search of prehistoric remains, and explored the bone-caves of Dordogne and the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, and examined the archaeological collections in numerous public and private museums. These researches formed the subjects of various memoirs in the "Natural History Review" and other publications, and were finally collected, with many additions, and published under the title of "Pre-historic Times as illustrated by Ancient Remains and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages," in a work which has passed through five editions. His readings in the literature relating to modern savage life led him to a consideration of the origin of civilization and of the manner in which customs, once all but universal in the infancy of the human race, became altered or narrowed down to the few rude tribes who may now alone possess them. These inquiries were originally