518 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



adapted as the stoves of the Egyptians to , bring her 

 chickens into life, she left off the habit of her race, and 

 saved herself the trouble of sitting upon them, — we 

 should certainly pronounce her a reasoning hen : and 

 if this hen had chanced to be that very one figured and 

 so elaborately described by Professor Fischer, with a 

 face like an old woinan^, a Hindoo metaphysician at 

 least could not doubt of her body, however hen-like, 

 being in truth directed in its operations by the soul of 

 some quondam amateur of poultry-breeding. Now 

 societies of ants have more than once exhibited a de- 

 viation from their usual instinct, which to me seems 

 quite as extraordinary and as indicative of reason as 

 would be that supposed in a hen. A certain degree 

 of warmth is required for the exclusion and rearing of 

 their eggs, larvae and pupae ; and in their ordinary 

 abodes, as you have been already told'*, they undergo 

 great daily labour in removingtheir charge to different 

 parts of the nest, as its temperature is affected by the 

 presence or absence of the sun. But Reaumur, in re- 

 futing the common notion of ants being injurious to 

 bees, tells us that societies of the former often saved 

 themselves all this trouble, by establishing their colo- 

 nies between the exterior wooden shutters and panes 

 of his glass hives, where, owing to the latter substance 

 being a tolerably good conductor of heat, their progeny 

 was at all times, and without any necessity of changing 

 their situation, in a constant, equable, and sufficient 



* See Fischer's Bcschreibiing tines Ifufins mit menscheniiftnlichem Pro- 

 Jile, 8vo, St. Petersburg 1816, and ,1 fi;in5lation in Thomson's ^Innals of 

 iV«7. viii. 241. 



" Vol. l.'^nd Edit. 3U4. 



