INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 4-61 



I. It is quite superfluous at this day to controvert the 

 explanations of instinct advanced by some of the philo- 

 sophers of the old school, such as that of Cudworth, who 

 referred this faculty to a certain plastic nature ; or that 

 of Des Cartes, who contended that animals are mere 

 machines. Nor, I fancy, would you thank me for en- 

 tering into an elaborate refutation of the doctrine of 

 Mylius, that many of the actions deemed instinctive are 

 the effect of painful corporeal feelings ; the cocoon of a 

 caterpillar, for instance, being the result of a fit of the 

 colic, produced by a superabundance of the gum which 

 fills its silk-bags, and which exuding, is twisted round 

 it, by its uneasy contortions, into a regular ball. Still 

 less need I advert to the notable discovery of some pupils 

 of Professor Winckler, that the brain, alias the soul, of 

 a bee or spider, is impressed at the birth of the insect 

 with certain geometrical figures, according to which 

 models its works are constructed, a position which 

 these gentlemen demonstrate very satisfactorily by a me- 

 morable experiment in which they themselves were able 

 to hear triangles. 



It is as unnecessary to waste any words in refutation 

 of the nonsense (for it deserves no better name) of Buf- 

 fon, who refers the instinct of societies of insects to the 

 circumstance of a great number of individuals being 

 brought into existence at the same time, all acting with 

 equal force, and obliged by the similarity of their inter- 

 nal and external structure, and the conformity of their 

 movements, to perform each the same actions, in the 

 same place, in the most convenient mode for themselves, 

 and least inconvenient for their companions; whence 

 results a regular, well-proportioned, and symmetrical 



