384 HAL"F HOTJKS WITH INSECTS. [Packard. 



of the drones, etc., etc., it is certain that this nnmber might 

 be very considerably increased, perhaps doubled." ^ 



Most, though perhaps not all, of these acts are as purely 

 instinctive as any one can imagine ; all bees do them in 

 nearly the same inanner, and as readily the moment they 

 leave their cells as a few days or weeks after. Such acts 

 may be called automatic, though not so much so as the 

 process of walking, flying, running and biting their pre}-. 

 They may be accomplished by the reflex action of the nerve 

 centres in the insects of the present generation, though in 

 the beginning secondarily reflexive. 



As regards the ordinary instinctive acts one may quite 

 agree with Descartes that insects are automata. But the 

 matter does not rest here. There is a history we beaevc yet 

 to be written, in the light of facts which remain to be discov- 

 ered by patient observation, of the origin of animal instincts, 

 and which will tend to prove that instincts ma}' be regarded, 

 in most cases at least, as the sum of inlieritcd experiences. 



Lamarck believed that instincts were due to certain inhe- 

 rent inclinations arising from habits impressed upon the 

 organs of the animals concerned in producing them. INIr. 

 Darwin combats Lamarck's view which he calls "the well 

 known doctrine of inherited habit, as advanced by Lamarck." 

 Rev. J. J. Murphy in his "Habit and Intelligence" leads us 

 to infer that he regards instinct as the sura of inherited 

 habits. lie well remarks, and this is the sum of the whole 

 matter: "reason differs from instinct only in being con- 

 scious. Instinct is unconscious reason, and reason is con- 

 scious instinct." This is tantamount to sajnng that the 

 instinct of the present generation of insects is unconscious 

 automatism, but that their ancestors who first learned by 

 experience how to build, for example, hexagonal cells, were 

 taught by reason, were conscious, intelligent agents ; and 

 this is where we would leave the subject. 



32 



