138 PERTECT SOCIETIES OE INSECTS. 



ing the youni^ bees that we are now considering; it 

 nould not, 1 think, be difficult to prove, that causes 

 at first sight equally inadequate have produced effects 

 full as important on the habits, tempers, and characters 

 of men and other animals : but as these will readily 

 occur to you, I shall not now enlarge upon them. 



Did we know the causes of the various deviations, 

 as to form and the like, observable in the three king- 

 doms of nature, and could apply them, we should be 

 able to produce these deviations at our pleasure. This 

 is exactly what the bees do. Their instinct teaches 

 them that a certain kind of food, supplied to a grub in- 

 habiting a certain dwelling, in a certain position, will 

 produce certain effects upon it, rendering it different 

 from Avhat it would have been under ordinary circum- 

 stances, and fitted to answer their peculiar wants. 



I trust that these arguments and probabilities will 

 in some degree reconcile you to what at first sight seems 

 so extraordinary and extravagant a doctrine. If not 

 yet fully satisfied, I can only recommend your having 

 recourse to experiments yourself. Leaving you there- 

 fore to this best mode of proof, I shall proceed to an- 

 other part of my history : — but first I must mention an 

 experiment of Reaumur's, which seems to come well in 

 here. To ascertain whether the expectation of a queen 

 was sufficient to keep alive the instinct and industry of 

 the worker-bees, he placed in a glazed hive some royal 

 cells containing both grubs and pupa?, and then intro- 

 duced about 1000 or 1500 workers and some drones. 

 These workers, which had been deprived of their 

 queen, at first destroyed some of the grubs in these 

 cells ; but they clustered around two that were covered 



