INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 187 



and again resume the former ? These are questions 

 which no known system can explain a . 



Here again, as observed in a former instance, the 

 wonder would be less, if every comb contained a certain 

 number of transition and of male cells, constantly situ- 

 ated in one and the same part of it : but this is far from 

 being the case. The event which alone, at whatever 

 period it may happen, seems to determine the bees to 

 construct male cells, is the oviposition of the queen. So 

 long as she continues to lay the eggs of workers not a 

 male cell is founded ; but as soon as she is about to lay 

 male eggs, the workers seem aware of it, and you then 

 see them form their cells irregularly, impart to them by 

 degrees a greater diameter, and at length prepare suitable 

 ranges of cradles for all the male race b . You must per- 

 ceive how absurd it would be to refer this astonishing 

 variation of instinct to any mere change in the sensations 

 of the bees ; and to what far-fetched and gratuitous sup- 

 positions we must be reduced, if we adopt any such ex- 

 planation. We can but refer it to an instinct of which 

 we know nothing ; and so referring it, can we help ex- 

 claiming with Huber, " Such is the grandeur of the 

 views and of the means of ordaining wisdom, that it is 

 not by a minute exactness that she marches to her end, 

 but proceeds from irregularity to irregularity, compen- 

 sating one by another : the admeasurements are made 

 on high, the apparent errors appreciated by a divine 

 geometry ; and order often results from partial diversity. 

 This is not the first instance which science has presented 

 to us of preordained irregularities which astonish our ig- 



a Huber, ii. 221-220, 244-247. b Ibid, ii, 226. 



