16 INSECT MISCELLANIES. 



oil, when poured into the ear, gives no pain to the 

 nerves of hearing, and its warmth is not even per- 

 ceived by them, though it may be hot enough to scald 

 the external orifice. He evidently does not, in this, 

 make any account of these nerves being deep-seated. 



Whether these facts, and others of a similar kind, 

 are sufficient to authorize us to consider the sense of 

 heat distinct from that of touch, we shall not here 

 stop to determine, but content ourselves with men- 

 tioning a few circumstances upon the subject, derived 

 from the observation of insects. Ants, for example, 

 are so delicately sensible of cold, that the finest day 

 will not tempt them to place their eggs, or pupas, at 

 the top of the nest, should the air be chill ; and it was 

 remarked so long ago as the time of Pliny, that, pre- 

 viously to bad weather, they are all in a bustle to se- 

 cure their eggs, forewarned, no doubt, by the percep- 

 tion of an altered temperature. In the interesting 

 proceedings of bees when swarming, as we shall 

 afterwards see, temperature, it would appear, is of the 

 utmost importance, so much so that Huber ascribes 

 to increased heat, arising from the agitation of bees 

 in a hive, the immediate cause of a body of emigrants 

 leaving the parent hive ; * and even on ordinary occa- 

 sions the working bees, while collecting honey in the 

 fields, are so feverishly afraid of bad weather, that a 

 single cloud passing over the sun will cause them to 

 make a precipitate retreat homewards. 



The only analogous circumstance which we recol- 

 lect as occurring in man with regard to the foresight of 

 bad weather, is found in the wandering pains in the 

 limbs experienced by persons subject to gout or rheu- 

 matism, which are felt so distinctly, some time before 

 rain or increased cold, as to enable the patients to 

 predict a change with the utmost certainty ; and we 



* Huber on Bees, p. 184. 



