INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 505 



ami is obviously unwarrantable, ^he only probable 

 supposition is, clearly, that a new instinct is developed 

 suited to the extraordinary situation in which the com- 

 munity stands, leading them now to regard with kind- 

 ness the drones, for whom otherwise they would have 

 felt the most violent aversion. 



In this instance, indeed, it would perhaps be more 

 strictly correct to say (which, however, is equally won- 

 derful) that the old instinct was extinguished; but in the 

 case of the loss of a queen, to which I am next to advert, 

 which is followed by positive operations, the extraordi- 

 nary development of a new and peculiar instinct is in- 

 disputable. 



In a hive which no untoward event has deprived of its 

 queen, the workers take no other active steps in the edu- 

 cation of her successors — those of which one is to occupy 

 her place when she has flown off at the head of a new 

 swarm in spring — than to prepare a certain number of 

 cells of extraordinary capacity for their reception while 

 in the egg, and to feed them when become grubs with a 

 peculiar food until they have attained maturity. This, 

 therefore, is their ordinary instinct; and it may happen 

 that the workers of a hive may have no necessity for a 

 long series of successive generations to exercise any other. 

 But suppose them to lose their queen. Far from sinking 

 into that inactive despair which was formerly attributed 

 to them, after the commotion which the ra]iidly-circu- 

 lated news of their calamity gave birth to has subsided, 

 they betake themselves with an alacrity from which man 

 when under misfortune might deign to take a lesson, to 

 the active reparation of their loss. Several ordinary cells. 



