18 ' IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



by a different organization and ampler dimensions, and 

 a more august form, has destined to this high office. 

 The only question remaining is, whether one be elected 

 from the rest by common consent as their leader, or 

 whether their instinct impels them to follow the first 

 that takes flight or alights. This last is the learned 

 Bochart's opinion, and seems mtfch the most reason- 

 able 3 . The absurdity of the other supposition, that 

 an election is made, wiJJ appear from such queries as 

 these, at which you may smile. Who are the electors? 

 Are the myriads of millions all consulted, or is the elec- 

 tive franchise confined to a few? Who holds the courts 

 and takes the votes ? Who casts them up and declares 

 the result ? When is the election made ? The larvae 

 appear to be as much under government as the perfect 

 insect. Is the monarch then chosen by his peers when 

 they first leave the egg and emerge from their subter- 

 ranean caverns? or have larva, pupa, and imago each 

 their separate king ? The account given us in Scripture 

 is certainly much the most probable, that the locusts 

 have no king, though they observe its much order and 

 regularity in their movements as if they were under mi- 

 litary discipline, and had a ruler over them 5 . Some 

 species of ants, as we learn from the admirable history of 

 them by M. P. Huber, though they go forth by common 

 consent upon their military expeditions, yet the order of 

 their columns keeps perpetually changing ; so that those 

 who lead the van at the first setting out, soon fall into 

 the rear, and others take their place : their successors 

 do the same ; and such is the constant order of their 

 march. It seems probable, as these columns are ex- 



8 Bochart, Hierozoic. ubi supra. b Proverbs xxx. 27. 



