5.-0 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



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 beheve 

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

 (hem 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 

 |)roceedingthey 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 vmd, 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 des 

 ciibanes quarrees" (says Bonnet, when speaking as to what faculty the 

 works of the beaver are to be referred), " mais ce sont eternellement des 

 ciibanes 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 pupas 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 

 of a long life of twelve 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 

 probability attribute to bees could be competent to the performance of 

 labours so complicated as those we have been considering, and which, if 

 the result of reason, would involve the most extensive and varied know- 

 ledge in the agents. Suppose a man to have attained by long practice the 

 art of modelling wax into a congeries of uniform hexagonal cells, with 

 pyramidal bottoms composed each of three rhombs, resembling the cells of 

 workers among bees. Let him now be set to make a congeries of similar 

 but larger cells (answering to the male cells), and unite these with the 

 former by other hexagonal cells, so that there should be no disruption in 

 the continuity or regularity of the whole assemblage, and no vacant inter- 

 vals or patching at the junctions either of the tubes or the bottoms 

 of the cells; — and you would have set him no very easy task — a task, in 

 short, which it may be doubted if he would satisfactorily perform in a 

 twelvemonth, though gifted with a clear head and a competent store of 

 geometrical knowledge, and which, if destitute of these requisites, it may 

 be safely asserted that he would never perform at all. How then can 

 we imagine it possible that this difficult problem, and others of a simi- 

 lar kind, can be so completely and exactly solved by animals of which 

 some are not two days old, others not a week, and probably none a year ? 

 The conclusion is irresistible — it is not reason but instinct that is their 

 guide. 



The second head, under which I proposed contrasting the instinct of 

 insects with those of the larger animals, was that of their 7tiimder in the 

 Kame individual. In the latter this is for the most part very limited, not 



1 (Euvres, is. 159. 



