60 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



therefore, we find them, in these extraordinary and improbable emergencies, 

 still availing themselves of the means apparently best calculated for 

 ensuring their object ; and if in addition they seem in some cases to gain 

 knowledge by experience ; if they can communicate information to each 

 other ; and if they are endowed with memory, it appears impossible to 

 deny that they are possessed of reason. I shall now produce facts in 

 proof of each of these positions ; not by any means all that might be 

 adduced, but a few of the most striking that occur to me. 



First, then, insects often, in cases not likely to be provided for by in- 

 stinct, adopt means evidently designed for effecting their object. 



A certain degree of warmth is necessary to hatch a hen's eggs, and we 

 give her little credit for reason in sitting upon them for this purpose. But 

 if any one had ever seen a hen make her nest in aheap 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 wo- 

 man l , a Hindoo metaphysician at least could not doubt of her body, how- 

 ever 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 indicative of reason as would be that sup- 

 posed in a hen. A certain degree of warmth is required for the exclusion 

 and rearing of their eggs, larvae, and pupae ; and in their ordinary abodes, 

 as you have been already told, 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 con- 

 ductor of heat, their progeny was at all times, and without any necessity 

 of changing their situation, in a constant, equable, and sufficient tempera- 

 ture. 2 Bonnet observed the same fact. He found that a society of ants 

 had piled up their young to the height of several inches, between the 

 flannel-lined case of his glass hives and the glass. When disturbed they 

 ran away with them, but always replaced them. 3 



I am persuaded that, after duly considering these facts you will agree 

 with me that it is impossible consistently to refer them to instinct, or to 

 account for them without supposing some stray ant, that had insinuated 

 herself into this tropical crevice, first to have been struck with the thought 

 of what a prodigious saving of labour and anxiety would occur to her com- 

 patriots by establishing their society here ; that she had communicated her 

 ideas to them ; and that they had resolved upon an emigration to this new- 

 discovered country this Madeira of ants whose genial clime presented 



1 See Fischer's Beschrdbung eines Huhns mit menschenahnlichem Profile, 8vo. St. 

 Petersburg, 1816 ; and a translation in Thomson's Annals of Phil. vii. 241. 

 3 Keaum. v. 709. 3 (Euvres, ii. 416. 



