512 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



ever seen a hen make her nest in a heap of fermenting 

 dung, among the bark of a hot-bed, or in the vicinity of 

 a baker's oven, where, the heat being as well adapted as 

 the stoves of the Egyptians to bring her chickens into 

 life, she left off the habit of her race, and saved herself 

 the trouble of sitting upon them, we should certainly 

 pronounce her a reasoning hen : and if this hen had 

 chanced to be that very one figured and so elaborately 

 described by Professor Fischer, with the profile of an old 

 woman* , a Hindoo metaphysician at least could not doubt 

 of her body, however hen-like, being in truth directed 

 in its operations by the soul of some quondam amateur 

 of poultry-breeding. Now societies of ants have more 

 than once exhibited a deviation from their usual instinct, 

 which to me seems quite as extraordinary and as indica- 

 tive of reason as would be that supposed in a hen. A 

 certain degree of warmth is required for the exclusion 

 and rearing of their eggs, larvae and pupa? ; and in their 

 ordinary abodes, as you have been already told 5 , they 

 undergo great daily labour in removing their charge to 

 different parts of the nest, as its temperature is affected 

 by the presence or absence of the sun. But Reaumur, 

 in refuting the common notion of ants being injurious to 

 bees, tells us that societies of the former often saved 

 themselves all this trouble, by establishing their colonies 

 between the exterior wooden shutters and panes of his 

 glass hives, where, owing to the latter substance being 

 a tolerably good conductor of heat, their progeny was 



* See Fischer's Beschreibung eines Huhns mil menschenahnlichem 

 Profile, Svo, St. Petersburg 1816, and a translation in Thomson's 

 Annals of Phil, viii.241. 



VOL. I. 366. 



