Lesson 54

Instinct or cleverness?

是本能还是机智

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1
  • Lesson 54
    • 2
  • Instinct or cleverness?
    • 3
  • Was the writer successful in protecting his peach tree? Why not?
    • 4
  • We have been brought up to fear insects.
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  • We regard them as unnecessary creatures that do more harm than good.
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  • We continually wage war on them, for they contaminate our food, carry diseases, or devour our crops.
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  • They sting or bite without provocation;
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  • they fly uninvited into our rooms on summer nights, or beat against our lighted windows.
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  • We live in dread not only of unpleasant insects like spiders or wasps, but of quite harmless ones like moths.
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  • Reading about them increases our understanding without dispelling our fears.
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  • Knowing that the industrious ant lives in a highly organized society
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  • does nothing to prevent us from being filled with revulsion when we find hordes of them crawling over a carefully prepared picnic lunch.
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  • No matter how much we like honey,
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  • or how much we have read about the uncanny sense of direction which bees possess, we have a horror of being stung.
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  • Most of our fears are unreasonable, but they are impossible to erase.
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  • At the same time, however, insects are strangely fascinating.
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  • We enjoy reading about them, especially when we find that, like the praying mantis, they lead perfectly horrible lives.
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  • We enjoy staring at them, entranced as they go about their business, unaware (we hope) of our presence.
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  • Who has not stood in awe at the sight of a spider pouncing on a fly,
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  • or a column of ants triumphantly bearing home an enormous dead beetle?
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  • Last summer I spent days in the garden watching thousands of ants crawling up the trunk of my prize peach tree.
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  • The tree has grown against a warm wall on a sheltered side of the house.
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  • I am especially proud of it,
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  • not only because it has survived several severe winters, but because it occasionally produces luscious peaches.
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  • During the summer, I noticed that the leaves of the tree were beginning to wither.
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  • Clusters of tiny insects called aphides were to be found on the underside of the leaves.
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  • They were visited by a large colony of ants which obtained a sort of honey from them.
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  • I immediately embarked on an experiment which
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  • even though it failed to get rid of the ants kept me fascinated for twenty-four hours.
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  • I bound the base of the tree with sticky tape, making it impossible for the ants to reach the aphides.
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  • The tape was so sticky that they did not dare to cross it.
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  • For a long time, I watched them scurrying around the base of the tree in bewilderment.
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  • I even went out at midnight with a torch and noted with satisfaction (and surprise)
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  • that the ants were still swarming around the sticky tape without being able to do anything about it.
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  • I got up early next morning hoping to find that the ants had given up in despair.
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  • Instead, I saw that they had discovered a new route.
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  • They were climbing up the wall of the house and then on to the leaves of the tree.
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  • I realized sadly that I had been completely defeated by their ingenuity.
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  • The ants had been quick to find an answer to my thoroughly unscientific methods!