INBTINCT OF INSECTS. 469 



ment from which it is drawn were accurate ; but that 

 it is not so, is known to every naturalist acquainted 

 with the fact that many different species of bees store 

 up honey in the hottest climates ; and that there is no 

 authentic instance on record of the hive-bees' altering 

 in any age or climate their peculiar operations, which 

 are now in the coldest and in the hottest regions pre- 

 cisely what they were in Greece in the time of Aristotle, 

 and in Italy in the days of Virgil. Indeed the single 

 fact, depending on the assertions of sucli accurate ob- 

 servers as Reaumur and Swammerdam, that a bee as 

 soon after it is disclosed from the pupa as its body is 

 dried and its wings expanded, and before it is possible 

 that it should have received any instruction, betakes 

 itself to the collecting of honey or the fabrication of a 

 cell, which operations it performs as adroitly as tlie 

 most hoary inhabitant of the hive, is alone sufficient to 

 set aside all the hear^say statements of Dr. Darwin, 

 and should have led him, as it must every logical rea- 

 Fioner, to the conclusion, that these and similar actions 

 of animals cannot be referred to any reasoning pro- 

 cess, nor be deemed the result of observation and ex- 

 perience. — It is true, it does not follow that animals, 

 besides instinct, have not, in a degree, the faculty of 

 reason also ; and as I shall in the sequel endeavour to 

 show, many of the actions of insects can be adequately 

 explained on no other supposition. But to deny, as 

 Dr. Darwin does, that the art with which the caterpil- 

 lar weaves its cocoon, or the unerring care with which 

 the moth places her eggs upon food that she herself 

 can never use, are the effects of instinct, is as unphi- 

 losophical and contrary to fact, as to insist that the 

 eagerness with whichj though it has never tasted milk. 



