108 MAKVKLS OF POND-LIFE. 



the question by the use of the term instinct. Those 

 who take tlie lowest view of insect life, assume that 

 tlie bee flies because it has wings, but without 

 Avishing to use them, and that the nerves exciting 

 them to action are in their turn excited, not ])y 

 volition, but by some physical stimulus. 



The sight or the smell of flowers is thought by 

 the same reasoners to be capable of attracting the 

 insect, which is unconscious of the attraction, while 

 proximity of food stimulates the tongue to make the 

 movements needful for its acquisition, and so forth. 

 The cells, they tell us, are built according to a 

 pattern which the earliest bee was impelled to con- 

 struct by forces that bore no analogy to human reason 

 and human will, and so originate all the ordinary 

 processes of bee life. Sometimes, however, it hap- 

 pens that man or accident interposes particular 

 obstacles, and forthwitli there appears a particular 

 modification of the orthodox plan, calculated to 

 meet the special difficulty. How is tliis? Does any 

 one of the difiiculties which the bee or the ant is 

 able to get over, produce precisely that kind of 

 electrical disturbance, or polar arrangement of nerve 

 particles that is necessary to stimulate the. first step 

 of the action by which the difficulty is surmounted; 

 and does the new condition thus established stimulate 

 the second step, and so forth, or can the bee, within 

 certain limits, really think, design, and contrive? 



