INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



just inference, if the statement from which it is drawn 

 were accurate ; but that it is not so, is known to every 

 naturalist acquainted with the fact that many different 

 species of bees store up honey in the hottest climates ; 

 and that there is no authentic instance on record of the 

 hive-bees' altering in any age or climate their peculiar 

 operations, which are now in the coldest and in the hot- 

 test regions precisely what they were in Greece in the 

 time of Aristotle, and in Italy in the days of Virgil. In- 

 deed the single fact, depending on the assertions of such 

 accurate observers as Reaumur and Swammerdam, that 

 a bee as soon after it is disclosed from the pupa as its 

 body is dried and its wings expanded, and before it is 

 possible that it should have received any instruction, be- 

 takes itself to the collecting of honey or the fabrication 

 of a cell, which operations it performs as adroitly as the 

 most hoary inhabitant of the hive, is alone sufficient to 

 set aside all the hear-say statements of Dr. Darwin, and 

 should have led him, as it must every logical reasoner, 

 to the conclusion, that these and similar actions of ani- 

 mals cannot be referred to any reasoning process, nor 

 be deemed the result of observation and experience. 

 It is true, it does not follow that animals, besides in- 

 stinct, have not, in a degree, the faculty of reason also ; 

 and as I shall in the sequel endeavour to show, many of 

 the actions of insects can be adequately explained on no 

 other supposition. But to deny, as Dr. Darwin does, 

 that the art with which the caterpillar weaves its cocoon, 

 or the unerring care with which the moth places her 

 eggs upon food that she herself can never use, are the 

 effects of instinct, is as unphilosophical and contrary to 

 fact, as to insist that the eagerness with which, though 



