INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 591 



which in this pressing emergency are mercilessly sacrificed — and fed with 

 the appropriate royal food to maturity. Thus sure of once more acquir- 

 ing a head, the hive return to their ordinary labors, and in about sixteen 

 days one or more queens are produced ; one of which, after being indebt- 

 ed to fortune for an elevation as singular as that of Catherine the First of 

 Russia, steps into day and assumes the reins of state. 



To this remarkable deviation from the usual procedures of the commu- 

 nity the observations above made in the case of the drones must be 

 applied. We cannot account for it by conceiving the working-bees to 

 be acquainted with the end which their operations have in view. If we 

 suppose them to know that the queen and working-grubs are originally 

 the same, and that to convert one of the latter into the former it is only 

 necessary to transfer it to an apartment sufficiently spacious and to feed it 

 with a peculiar food, we confer upon them a depth of reason to which 

 Prometheus, when he made his clay man, had no pretensions — an original 

 discovery, in short, to which man has but just attained after some thou- 

 sand years of painful research, having escaped all the observers of bees 

 from Aristomachus to Swammerdam and Reaumur of modern times. 

 We have no other alternative, then, but to refer this phenomenon to the 

 extraordinary development of a new instinct suited for the exigency, how- 

 ever incomprehensible to us the manner of its excitement may appear. 



11. Such, then, are the exquisiteness, the number, and the extraordi- 

 nary development of the instincts of insects. But is instinct the sole 

 guide of their actions ? Are they in every case the blind agents of irre- 

 sistible impulse? These queries, I have already hinted, cannot in my 

 opinion be replied to in the affirmative ; and I now proceed to show that 

 though instinct is the chief guide of insects, they are endowed also with 

 no inconsiderable portion of reason. 



Some share of reason is denied by few philosophers of the present day 

 to the larger animals. But its existence has not generally (except by 

 those who reject instinct altogether) been recognized in insects : probably 

 on the ground that, as the proportions of reason and of instinct seem to 

 coexist in an inverse ratio, the former might be expected to be extinct in 

 a class in which the latter is found in such perfection. This rule, how- 

 ever, though it may hold good in man, whose instincts are so few and 

 imperfect, and whose reason is so pre-eminent, is far from being confirm- 

 ed by an extended survey of the classes of animals generally. Many 

 quadrupeds, birds, and fishes, with instincts apparently not very acute, do 

 not seem to have their place supplied by a proportionably superior share 

 of reason ; and insects, as I think the facts I have to adduce will prove, 

 though ranking, so low in the scale of creation, seem to enjoy as great a 

 degree of reason as many animals of the superior classes, yet in combina- 

 tion with instincts much more numerous and exquisite. 



I must premise, however, that in so' perplexed and intricate a field, I 

 am sensible how necessary it is to tread with caution. A far greater 

 collection of facts must be made, and the science of metaphysics gene- 

 rally be placed on a more solid foundation than it now can boast, before 

 we can pretend to decide, in numerous cases, which of the actions of 

 insects are to be deemed purely instinctive, and which the result of reason. 



