562 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



authority of M. Cossigny, who witnessed it in the Isle of France, where 

 the Sphedna are accustomed to bury the bodies of cockroaches along with 

 their eggs for provision for their young. He sometimes saw an insect of 

 this tribe attempt to drag after it into its hole a dead cockroach, which was 

 too big to be made to enter by all its efforts. After several ineffectual 

 trials the animal came out, cut off its elytra and some of its legs, and thus 

 reduced in compass drew in its prey without difficulty. 1 



Under this head I shall mention but one fact more. A friend of 

 Gleditsch, the observer of the singular economy of the burying beetle 

 (Necrophorus vespillo) related in a former letter, being desirous of drying a 

 dead toad, fixed it to the top of a piece of wood which he stuck into the 

 ground. But, a short time afterwards, he found that a body of these inde- 

 fatigable little sextons had circumvented him in spite of his precautions. 

 Not being able to reach the toad, they had undermined the base of the 

 stick until it fell, and then buried both stick and toad. 8 



In the second place, insects gain knowledge from experience, which 

 would be impossible if they were not gifted with some portion of reason. 

 In proof of their thus profiting, I shall select from the numerous facts that 

 might be brought forward four only, one of which has been already slightly 

 adverted to. 



M. P. Huber, in his valuable paper in the sixth volume of the Linnean 

 Transactions* states that he has seen large humble-bees, when unable from 

 the size of their head and thorax to reach to the bottom of the long tubes 

 of the flowers of beans, go directly to the calyx, pierce it as well as the tube 

 with the exterior horny parts of their proboscis, and then insert their pro- 

 boscis itself into the orifice and abstract the honey. They thus flew from 

 flower to flower, piercing the tubes from without, and sucking the nectar ; 

 while smaller humble-bees, or those with a longer proboscis, entered in at 

 the top of the corolla. Now, from this statement, it seems evident that 

 the larger bees did not pierce the bottoms of the flowers until they had 

 ascertained by trial that they could not reach the nectar from the top; but 

 that having once ascertained by experience that the flowers of beans are too 

 strait to admit them, they then, without further attempts in the ordinary 

 way, pierced the bottoms of all the flowers which they wished to rifle of 

 their sweets. M. Aubert du Petit-Thouars observed that humble-bees and 

 the carpenter-bee (Xylocopa* violacea) gained access in a similar manner to 

 the nectar of Antirrhinum Linaria and majus and Mirabilis Jalapa, as do the 

 common bees of the Isle of France to that of Canna indica 5 -, and I have 

 myself more than once noticed holes at the base of the long nectaries of 

 Aquilegia vulgaris, which I attribute to the same agency. 6 



before flying away with them, and that, consequently, the above fact proves no- 

 thing as to the reason of insects. Here, however, I must beg to differ from 

 him ; for supposing Dr. Darwin's statement to be accurate, which, from the 

 minute particulars into which he enters, we have no right to doubt, the circum- 

 stances of the wasp's first violating its natural instinct by flying away with the fly 

 before cutting off its wings, and then, on finding the wind act upon them, alighting 

 to do what it had neglected at first, cannot well be explained except on the suppo- 

 sition of some reasoning process having passed through its mind. In any case, there 

 is no need of this particular fact to prove the existence of reason in insects, of which 

 Buch numerous other instances have been adduced. 



* Reaum. vi. 283. * Gleditsch, Physic. Bot. (Econ. Abhandl iii. 220. 



* P. 222. * Apis * *. d. 2. /5, K. Nouv. Bui des Sciences, i. 45. 



6 See an interesting article by Mr. C. Darwin in the Gardener's Chronicle, 1841, 



