INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 553 



regurgitate into the extended proboscis of their hungry companions who 

 have been occupied at home a portion of the honey collected in the fields ; 

 and another directs them to unload their legs of the masses of pollen, and 

 to store it in the cells for future use. 



Several distinct instincts, again, are called into action in the important 

 business of feeding the young brood. One teaches them to swallow pollen, 

 not to satisfy the calls of hunger, but that it may undergo in their stomach 

 an elaboration fitting it for the food of the grubs ; and another to regur- 

 gitate it when duly concocted, and to administer it to their charge, pro- 

 portioning the supply to the age and condition of the recipients. A third 

 informs them when the young grubs have attained their full growth, and 

 directs them to cover their cells with a waxen lid, convex in the male 

 cells, but nearly flat in those of workers ; and by a fourth, as soon as the 

 young bees have burst into day, they are impelled to clean out the deserted 

 tenements and to make them ready for new occupants. 



Numerous as are the instincts I have already enumerated, the list must 

 yet include those connected with that mysterious principle which binds 

 the working-bees of a hive to their queen ; the singular imprisonment in 

 which they retain the young queens that are to lead off* a swarm, until 

 their wings be sufficiently expanded to enable them to fly the moment 

 they are at liberty, gradually paring away the waxen wall that confines 

 them to their cell to an extreme thinness, and only suffering it to be 

 broken down at the precise moment required ; the attention with which, 

 in these circumstances, they feed the imprisoned queen by frequently 

 putting honey upon her proboscis, protruded from a small orifice in the lid 

 of her cell ; the watchfulness with which, when at the period of swarming 

 more queens than one are required, they place a guard over the cells of 

 those undisclosed, to preserve them from the jealous fury of their excluded 

 rivals ; the exquisite calculation with which they invariably release the 

 oldest queens the first from their confinement ; the singular love of monar- 

 chical dominion, by which, when two queens in other circumstances are 

 produced, they are led to impel them to combat until one is destroyed ; 

 the ardent devotion which binds them to the fate and fortunes of the sur- 

 vivor ; the distraction which they manifest at her loss, and their resolute 

 determination not to accept of any stranger until an interval has elapsed 

 sufficiently long to allow of no chance of the return of their rightful sove- 

 reign ; and (to omit a further enumeration) the obedience which in the 

 utmost noise and confusion they show to her well-known hum. 



a poor one, for the sea was running so high that a boat which left the ship was 

 lost. A few days afterwards, however, when the gates of Gibraltar were opened 

 in the morning, the ass presented himself for admittance, and proceeded to the stable 

 of Mr. Weeks, a merchant, which he had formerly occupied, to the no small surprise 

 of this gentleman, who imagined that from some accident the animal had never been 

 shipped on board the Ister. On the return of this vessel to repair, the mystery was 

 explained ; and it turned out that Valiante (so the ass was called) had not only swum 

 safely to shore, but, without guide, compass, or travelling map, had found his way 

 from Point de Gat to Gibraltar, a distance of more than two hundred miles, which he 

 had never traversed before, through a mountainous and intricate country, intersected 

 by streams, and in so short a period that he could not have made one false turn. 

 His not having been stopped on the road was attributed to the circumstance of his 

 having been formerly used to whip criminals upon, which was indicated to the pea- 

 sants, who have a superstitious horror of such asses, by the holes in his ears, to 

 which the persons flogged were tied. 



