INSTINCT OF INSECTS. t99 



annual autumnal murder of the drones, &c. Sec. — it is 

 certain that this number might be very considerably in- 

 creased, perhaps doubled. 



At the first view you will be inclined to suspect some 

 fallacy in this enumeration, and that this variety of ac- 

 tions ought to be referred rather to some general prin- 

 ciple, capable of accommodating itself to different cir- 

 cumstances, than to so many different kinds of instinct. 

 But to what principle? Not to reason, the faculty to 

 which we assign this power of varying accommodation. 

 All the actions above adduced come strictly under the 

 description of instinctive actions, being all performed by 

 every generation of bees since the creation of the world, 

 and as perfectly a day or two after their birth as at any 

 subsequent period. And as the very essence of instinct 

 consists in the determinate character of the actions to 

 which it gives birth, it is clear that every distinctly diffe- 

 rent action must be referred to a distinct instinct. Few 

 will dispute that the instinct which leads a duck to re- 

 sort to the water is a different instinct from that which 

 leads her to sit upon her eggs ; for the hen though en- 

 dowed with one is not with the other. In fact, they are 

 as distinct and unconnected as the senses of sight and 

 smell ; and it appears to me that it would be as contrary 

 to philosophical accuracy of language, in the former case 

 to call the two instincts modifications of each other, as 

 in the latter so to designate the two senses ; and as we 

 say that a deaf and blind man has fewer senses than other 

 men, so (strictly) we ought not to speak of instinct as one 

 faculty (though to avoid circumlocution I have myself 

 often employed this common mode of expression), or say 

 that one insect lias a greater or less share of instinct than 



2 K 2 



