INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 537 



were accurate ; but that it is not so is known to every naturalist acquainted 

 with the fact that many different species of bees store up honey in the 

 hottest climates ; and that there is no authentic instance on record of the 

 hive-bees altering, in any age or climate, their peculiar operations, which 

 are now in the coldest and in the hottest regions precisely what they were 

 in Greece in the time of Aristotle, and in Italy in the days of Virgil. In- 

 deed the single fact, depending on the assertions of such accurate observers 

 as Reaumur and Swammerdam, that a bee as soon after it is disclosed from 

 the pupa as its body is dried and its wings expanded, and before it is pos- 

 sible that it should have received any instruction, betakes itself to the 

 collecting of honey or the fabrication of a cell, which operation it performs 

 as adroitly as the most hoary inhabitant of the hive, is alone sufficient to 

 set aside all the hearsay statements of Dr. Darwin, and should have led 

 him, as it must every logical reasoner, to the conclusion, that these and 

 similar actions of animals cannot be referred to any reasoning process, nor 

 be deemed the result of observation and experience. It is true, it does not 

 follow that animals, besides instinct, have not, in a degree, the faculty of 

 reason also ; and as I shall in the sequel endeavour to show, many of the 

 actions of insects can be adequately explained on no other supposition. 

 But to deny, as Dr. Darwin does, that the art with which the caterpillar 

 weaves its cocoon, or the unerring care with which the moth places her 

 eggs upon food that she herself can never use, are the effects of instinct, 

 is as unphilosophical and contrary to fact as to insist that the eagerness 

 with which, though it has never tasted milk, the infant seeks for its mother's 

 breast, is the effect of reason. 



Instinct, then, is not the result of a plastic nature; of a system of ma- 

 chinery; of diseased bodily action ; of models impressed on the brain ; nor 

 of organic shootings-out : it is not the effect of the habitual determination 

 for ages of the nervous fluid to certain organs ; nor is it either the impulse 

 of the Deity, or reason. Without pretending to give a logical definition of 

 it, which, while we are ignorant of the essence of reason, is impossible, we 

 may call the instincts of animals those unknown faculties implanted in their 

 constitution by the Creator, by which, independent of instruction, obser- 

 vation, or experience, and without a knowledge of the end in view, they 

 are impelled to the performance of certain actions tending to the well-being 

 of the individual and the preservation of the species : and with this de- 

 scription, which is, in fact, merely a confession of ignorance, we must, in 

 the present state of metaphysical science, content ourselves. 



I here say nothing of that supposed connection of the instinct of animals 

 with their sensations, which has been introduced into many definitions of 

 this mysterious power, for two reasons. In the first place, this definition 

 merely sets the world upon the tortoise ; for what do we know more than 

 before about the nature of instinct, when we have called it, with Brown, a 

 predisposition to certain actions when certain sensations exist, or with 

 Tucker have ascribed it to the operation of the senses, or to that internal 

 feeling called appetite ? But, secondly, this connection of instinct with 

 bodily sensation, though probable enough in some instances, is by no means 

 generally evident. We may explain in this way the instincts connected 

 with hunger and the sexual passion, and some other particular facts, as the 

 laying of the eggs of the flesh-fly in the flowers of Stapelia hirsuta, instead 

 of in carrion, their proper nidus, and of those of the common house-fly in 



