508 INSTIKCT or IxNSECrS. 



instinct of building cells to prevail; in another that of 

 ventilating the hive ; in a third that of feeding the 

 young brood ? For my own part, I confess that the 

 more I reflect on this subject, and contrast the diver- 

 sity of the means with the regularity and uniformity of 

 the end, the more I am lost in astonishment. The 

 effects of instinct seem even more wonderful than those 

 of reason, in the same manner as the consentaneous 

 movements of a mighty and divided army, which, though 

 under the command of twenty generals and from the 

 most distant quarters, should meet at the assigned spot 

 at the very hour fixed upon, would be more surprising 

 than the steam-moved operations, however complex, 

 of one of Boulton's mints. 



For the sake of distinctness and compression, I have 

 confined myself in considering the number of the in- 

 f-tincts of individual insects to a single species, the bee; 

 but if the history of other societies of these animals — 

 wasps, ants, &c. detailed in ray former letters, be duly 

 weighed, it will be seen that they furnish examples of 

 the variety in question fully as striking. These cor- 

 roborating proofs I shall leave to your own inference, 

 and proceed to the third head, under which I proposed 

 to consider the instincts of insects — that of their ex- 

 traordinary development. 



The development of some of the instincts of the 

 larger animals, such as those of sex, is well known to 

 depend upon their age and the peculiar state of the 

 bodily organs ; and to this, as before observed, the suc- 

 cession of different instincts in the same insect, in its 

 larva and perfect state, is closely analogous. But 



