INSTINCT. 501 



functions, and this transit, this voluntary adaptation, still more convinces 

 us that the instinct of animals corresponds to the soul of man, and that 

 reason, which has been considered as the exclusive characteristic of mail, 

 is not wholly wanting in them. 



The proof that insects acquire a certain experience, and are capable 

 of combinations of what they have experienced, many bees exhibit to 

 us, which lick with their long tongues the honey glands of flowers, and 

 fly industriously around from one to the other. Thus, humble-bees, 

 which cannot reach with their proboscis the nectaries placed at the 

 bottom of the long tubular flower, open it at the side with their 

 mandibles, and now passing their tongue through the aperture, imbibe 

 the honey previously inaccessible to them. According to Ch. K. 

 Sprengel, those flowers which contain nectaries are often decorated 

 with radiating markings, generally red, which serve the insect as a 

 mark of recognition. If such a recognition actually take place, 

 experience which the insects have gained can be the sole instructor. 

 According to Reaumur, the ants that have formed a dwelling in the 

 vicinity of a bee-hive never enter it so long as it continues occupied by 

 the bees, but laboriously collect their nectar from the aphides dispersed 

 upon plants ; but if a hive, of which the bees have been destroyed, be 

 placed in the situation of the former one, they speedily visit it in large 

 troops, and enjoy the honey undisturbed. Here, therefore, we again 

 detect experience, viz. that the bees immediately destroy all visiters 

 that intrude into their dwelling, as the warning instructress of the 

 cautious reserve of the ants. 



To the faculty of collecting experience, a second is superadded, 

 which gives this experience its value, namely, memory. The experience 

 gained must remain in constant recollection if it be to yield a constant 

 advantage, and it is made so by a quality of the soul which we call 

 memory. This quality is also attributable to the instincts of insects. 

 The same as the swallow and the stork yearly return to their former 

 dwellings, so does the bee each spring revisit her former collecting 

 places, and the very same tree whence she gathered honey the preceding 

 year. Among the many hives which may possibly be placed together, 

 each bee accurately recognises her own when she returns from her 

 journeys, and we never observe the neuters flying around other hives 

 for the purpose of discovering theirs. This is not a mere recognition 

 of the same hive from its external marks, but the bee exactly knows the 

 spot where it is to be found, for if another have been put in its place, 

 it \vill prepare within it, in conjunction with all its returning com- 



