INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 583 



enlarged dimensions ? And how can we feel adequate astonishment 

 that they should have the art of making cells of such different sizes 

 correspond ?^ 



After this long but I flatter myself not wholly uninteresting enumeration, 

 you will scarcely hesitate to admit that insects, and of these the bee pre- 

 eminently, are endowed with a much more exquisite and flexible instinct 

 than the larger animals. But you may be here led to ask, Can all this be 

 referred to instinct ? Is not this pliability to circumstances — this surprising 

 adaptation of means for accomplishing an end — rather the result of reason? 



You will not doubt my allowing the appositeness of this question, when 

 I frankly tell you that so strikingly do many of the preceding facts seem 

 at first view the effect of reason, that in my original sketch of the letter 

 you are now reading, I had arranged them as instances of this faculty. 

 But mature consideration has convinced me (though I confess the subject 

 has great difficulties) that this view was fallacious ; and that though some 

 circumstances connected with these facts may, as I shall hereafter show, 

 be referable to reason, the facts themselves can only be consistently ex- 

 plained by regarding them as I have here done, as examples of variations 

 of particular instincts : — and this on two accounts. 



In the first place, these variations, however singular, are limited in their 

 extent : all bees are, and have always been, able to avail themselves of a 

 certain number, but not to increase that number. Bees cemented their 

 combs, when becoming heavy, to the top of the hive with mitys, in the 

 time of Aristotle and Pliny as they do now ; and there is every reason to 

 believe that then, as now, they occasionally varied their procedures, by 

 securing them with wax or with propolis only, either added to the upper 

 range of cells, or disposed in braces and ties to the adjoining combs. But 

 if in thus proceeding they were guided by reason, why not under certain 

 circumstances adopt other modes of strengthening their combs ? Why not, 

 when wax and propolis are scarce, employ mud, which they might see the 

 martin avail herself of so successfully ? Or why should it not come into 

 the head of some hoary denizen of the hive, that a little of the mortar with 

 which his careful master plasters the crevices between his habitation and 

 its stand might answer the end of mitys? " Si seulement ils elevoient une 

 fois descabanes quarrees " (says Bonnet, when speaking as to what faculty 

 the works of the beaver arc to be referred), " mais ce sont elernellement 

 des cabanes rondes ou ovales^ :" and so we might say of the phenomena 

 in question — Show us but one instance of bees having substituted mud or 

 mortar for mitys, pissoceros, or propolis, or wooden props for waxen ties, 

 and there could be no doubt of their being here guided by reason. But 

 since no such instance is on record ; since they are still confined to the 

 same limits — however surprising the range of these limits — as they were 

 two thousand years ago ; and since the bees emerged from their pupae but 

 a few hours before will set themselves as adroitly to work, and pursue their 

 operations as scientifically as their brethren, who can boast the experience 

 ofa long life of tv^^elve months' duration; — we must still regard these 

 actions as variations of instinct. 



In the second place, no degree of reason that we can with any share of 



» Huber, ii. 219. * CEuvres, ix. 159. 



