240 LIFE AND HABIT. 



cerning which she probably is at heart utterly sceptical, 

 rather than not sit at all. There is no honey and cell- 

 making instinct so strong as the instinct to eat, if they 

 are hungry, or to grow wings, and make themselves 

 into bees at all. Like ourselves, so long as they can 

 get plenty to eat and drink, they will do no work. 

 Under these circumstances, not one drop of honey nor 

 one particle of wax will they collect, except, I presume, 

 to make cells for the rearing of their young. 



Sydney Smith writes : — 



" The most curious instance of a change of instinct is 

 recorded by Darwin. The bees carried over to Barba- 

 does and the Western Isles ceased to lay up any honey 

 after the first year, as they found it not useful to them. 

 They found the weather so fine, and materials for 

 making honey so plentiful, that they quitted their- 

 grave, prudent, and mercantile, character, became 

 exceedingly profligate and debauched, ate up their 

 capital, resolved to work no more, and amused them- 

 selves by flying about the sugar-houses and stinging 

 the blacks" (Lecture XVII. on Moral Philosophy). 

 The ease, then, with which the honey-gathering and 

 cell-making habits are relinquished, would seem to point 

 strongly in the direction of their acquisition at a com- 

 paratively late period of development. 



I have dealt with bees only, and not with ants, which 

 would perhaps seem to present greater difficulty, inas- 

 much as in some families of these there are two, or even 

 three, castes of neuters with well-marked and wide dif- 

 ferences of structure and instinct ; but I think the reader 

 will agree with me that the ants are sufficiently covered 



