INSTINCT IN ANIMALS. 183 



sight, and how very rapid its motions, to enable 

 it to steer itself between drops bigger than its 

 own body, any one of which, falling upon it, 

 would dash it to the ground. 



Let us now look at the spider. Which of 

 you fishermen can make a net as artfully woven, 

 and more admirably adapted to catch its prey, 

 than this insect? Again, what beast of prey 

 would think of digging a pit-fall in the track 

 of the animals which serve it for food, and at 

 the bottom of which it conceals itself, patiently 

 waiting until some unhappy victim falls into the 

 trap ? Yet this is done by a spider, and also by 

 an insect called the ant-lion. 



There is a beetle which rolls up pellets of 

 dung, in each of which it deposits one of its 

 eggs. In places where it meets with cow or 

 horse dung only, it is under the necessity of 

 having this work to do. But, in places where 

 sheep are kept, this beetle very wisely saves its 

 labour, and ingeniously avails itself of the pellet- 

 shaped balls dropped by those animals. 



I am going to tell you an extraordinary in- 

 stance of instinct in bees. I should tell you 

 that the queen-bee is the parent of all the bees 

 in a hive, and they amount, in a well-stocked 



