INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 519 



temperature^. Bonnet observed the same fact. He 

 found that a society of ants had piled up their young 

 to the height of several inches, between the flannel- 

 lined case of his glass hives and the glass. When dis- 

 turbed they ran away with them, but always replaced 

 them*'. 



I am persuaded that after duly considering these 

 facts, you will agree with me that it is impossible con- 

 sistently to refer them to instinct, or to account for 

 them without supposing some stray ant, that had in- 

 sinuated herself into this tropical crevice, first to have 

 been struck with the thought of what a prodigious sav- 

 ing of labour and anxiety would occur to her compa- 

 triots by establishing their society here ; — that she had 

 communicated her ideas to them ; — and that they had 

 resolved upon an emigration to this new-discovered 

 country— this Madeira of ants — whose genial clime 

 presented advantages which no other situation could 

 offer. Neither instinct, nor any conceivable modifi- 

 cation of instinct, could have taught the ants to avail 

 themselves of a good fortune which but for the inven- 

 tion of glass hives would never have offered itself to a 

 generation of these insects since the creation ; for there 

 is nothing; analogous in nature to the constant and 

 equable warmth of such a situation, the heat of any ac- 

 cidental mass of fermenting materials soon ceasing, and 

 no heat being given out from a society of bees when 

 lodged in a hollow tree, their natural residence. The 

 conclusion, then, seems irresistible, that reason must 

 have been their gu,"de, inducing a departure from their 

 natural instinct as extraordinary as would be that of a 



* Reaum. v. 709. " (Euvrcs,\\. 416. 



