594 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



the profile of an old woman}, a Hindoo metaphysician at least could not 

 doubt of her body, however hen-like, being in truth directed in its opera- 

 tions by the soul of some quondam amateur of poultry-breeding. Now 

 societies of ants have more than once exhibited a deviation from their usual 

 instinct, which to me seems quite as extraordinary and as indicative of 

 reason as would be that supposed in a hen. A certain degree of warmth 

 is required for the exclusion and rearing of their eggs, larvae, and pupae ; 

 and in their ordinary abodes, as you have been already told, they undergo 

 great daily labor in removing their charge to different parts of the nest, 

 as its temperature is affected by the presence or absence of the sun. But 

 Reaumur, in refuting the common notion of ants being injurious to bees, 

 tells us that societies of the former often saved themselves all this trouble, 

 by establishing their colonies between the exterior wooden shutters and 

 panes of his glass hives, where, owing to the latter substance being a 

 tolerably good conductor of heat, their progeny was at all times, and with- 

 out any necessity of changing their situation, in a constant, equable, and 

 sufficient temperature.^ Bonnet observed the same fact. He found that 

 a society of ants had piled up their young to the height of several inches, 

 between the flannel-lined case of his glass hives and the glass. When 

 disturbed they ran away with them, but always replaced them.^ 



I am persuaded that, after duly considering these facts, you will agree 

 with me that it is impossible consistently to refer them to instinct, or to 

 account for them without supposing some stray ant, that had insinuated 

 herself into this tropical crevice, first to have been struck with the thought 

 of what a prodigious saving of labor and anxiety would occur to her 

 compatriots by establishing their society here ; that she had communicated 

 her ideas to them; and that they had resolved upon an emigration to this 

 new-discovered country — this Madeira of ants — whose genial clime pre- 

 sented advantages which no other situation could offer. Neither instinct, 

 nor any conceivable modification of instinct, could have taught the ants 

 to avail themselves of a good fortune which but for the invention of glass 

 hiv^es would never have offered itself to a generation of these insects 

 since the creation ; for there is nothing analogous in nature to the constant 

 and equable warmth of such a situation, the heat of any accidental mass 

 of fermenting materials soon ceasing, and no heat being given out from a 

 society of bees when lodged in a hollow tree, their natural residence. 

 The conclusion, then, seems irresistible, that reason must have been their 

 guide, inducing a departure from their natural instinct as extraordinary as 

 would be that of a hen which should lay her eggs in a hot-bed, and cease 

 to sit upon them. 



The adaptation of means to an end not likely to have been provided 

 for by instinct is equally obvious in the ingenious mode by which a nest of 

 humble-bees propped up their tottering comb, the particulars of which 

 having before mentioned to you, I need not here repeat. 



There is perhaps no surer criterion of reason than, after having tried 

 one mode of accomplishing a purpose, adopting another more likely to 

 succeed. Insects are able to stand this test. A bee which Huber 



> See Fischer's Bcschreibung eines Huhns mit menschenahnlichem Profile, 8vo. St. Petersburg, 

 1816 ; and a translation in Thomson's Annals uf Phil. viii. 241. 

 « Reaum. v. 709. 3 CEuvres, ii. 416. 



