so* INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



duly fertilized, and consequently sure the next season of 

 a succession of males, all the drones, as I have before 

 stated ^, towards the approach of winter are massacred 

 by the workers with the most unrelenting ferocity. To 

 this seemingly cruel course they are doubdess impelled 

 by an imperious instinct; and as it is regularly followed 

 in every hive thus circumstanced, it would seem at the 

 first view to be an impulse as intimately coimected with 

 the organization and very existence of the workers, and 

 as incapable of change, as that which leads them to build 

 cells or to store up honey. But this is far from being 

 the case. However certain the doom of the drones this 

 autumn, if the hive be furnished with a duly-fertilized 

 queen, their undisturbed existence over the winter is 

 equally sure if the hive have lost its sovereign, or her 

 impregnation have been so retai'ded as to make a suc- 

 cession of males in the spring doubtful. In such a hive 

 the workers do not destroy a single drone, though the 

 hottest persecution rages in all the hives around them. 



Now, how are we to explain this difference of con- 

 duct? Are we to suppose that the bees know and reason 

 upon this alteration in the circumstances of their com- 

 nninity — that they infer the possibility of their entire 

 extinction if the whole male stock were destroyed when 

 without a queen — and that thus influenced by a wise 

 policy they restrain the fury they would otherwise have 

 exercised ? This would be at once to make them not 

 only gifted with reason, but endowed with a power of 

 looking before and after, and a command over the 

 strongest natural }>ropensities, superior to what could 

 be expected in n similar case even from a society of men ; 

 * See above, p. l/l — ,_ 



