INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 503 



proceed to the third head, under which I proposed to 

 consider the instincts of insects that of their extraordi- 

 nary development. 



The development of some of the instincts of the larger 

 animals, such as those of sex, is well known to depend 

 upon their age and the peculiar state of the bodily or- 

 gans ; and to this, as before observed, the succession of 

 different instincts in the same insect, in its larva and per- 

 fect state, is closely analogous. But what I have now 

 in view is that extraordinary 'development of instinct, 

 which is dependent not upon the age or any change in 

 the organization of the animal, but upon external events 

 which in individuals of the same species, age, and 

 structure, in some circumstances slumbers unmoved, but 

 may in others be excited to the most singular and unlook- 

 ed-for action. In illustrating this property of instinct, 

 which, as far as I am aware, is not known to occur in 

 any of the larger animals, I shall confine myself as be- 

 fore to the hive-bee ; the only insect, indeed, in which 

 its existence has been satisfactorily ascertained, though 

 it is highly probable that other species living in societies 

 may exhibit the same phenomenon. 



Several of the facts occurring in the history of bees 

 might be referred to this head ; but I shall here advert 

 only to the treatment of the drones by the workers under 

 different circumstances, and to the operations of the 

 latter consequent upon the irretrievable loss of the queen 

 facts which have been before stated to you, but to the 

 principal features of which my present argument makes 

 it necessary that I should again direct your attention. 



If a hive of bees be this year in possession of a queen 



