Lubbock was also an amateur biologist of some distinction, writing books on hymenoptera, on insect sense organs and development, on the intelligence of animals, and on other natural history topics. As a politician, one of his successes was in the passing of the Importation of Plumage Prohibition Act 1908. He was a member of the famous X Club founded by T.H. Huxley to promote the growth of science in Britain. He discovered that ants were sensitive to the ultraviolet range of the spectrum. The Punch verse of 1882 captured him perfectly: