392 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 15. 



and then he would have stayed at home be- 

 cause he loved to. And so I can see it would 

 be better if you could make the bees want to 

 stay at home and work, and not swarm ; but 

 it's nature — a natural instinct to swarm. Can 

 you change or eradicate an instinct, a primary 

 instinct^ as Mr. Culley says, by breeding or 

 domestication ? " 



"Heavens to Betsey! Talking bees yet," 

 exclaimed my friend Simpson. " Whj-, you 

 know enough about bees to make a book. But 

 I came over to see if I could borrow a dozen 

 ten-penny nails — some of them 'ere round 

 ones." 



I supplied his modest request, and proceed- 

 ed. 'I don't see, deacon, why instinct can't 

 be bred out as well as bred in. Let us see. 

 There is the silkworm. I am informed that 

 they have been bred so long on shelves or pa- 



irksome duty of incubating and bringing up 

 a family, and so on. But I want to call your at- 

 tention to another instinct. Audubon, that 

 great naturalist, or ornithologist, perhaps, I 

 ought to call him, tells how birds of the same 

 species build their nests very differently in the 

 North from what they do in the Soulh, owing 

 to the difference in climate. Then there is 

 the instinct of fear I was speaking of the oth- 

 er day. Every thing, almost, has it. You 

 know Noah and his sons were told in that 

 same book of Genesis that the fear of them 

 and the dread of them (and that meant his 

 descendants as well) should be on the beasts 

 of the field and the fowls of the air and the 

 fish of the sea, and all the creeping things on 

 the earth (and that meant every thing). And 

 I could not help but notice last summer, 

 when I went a fishing, how the fish would 



" F ASSET MAKES ONE ON THE 'SOUIRE." 



per, and fed with leaves picked by hand, that, 

 if you place them on the leaves on the trees, 

 instead of beginning at the edge of the leaves 

 they are liable to begin and gnaw off the foot- 

 stalk, and drop to the ground and perish. 

 And then many of them lay their eggs with- 

 out sticking them to the surface of any thing. 

 They have lost some of their instincts. Again, 

 there is the migratory instinct of birds You 

 know how most of them in a state of nature 

 would perish if they didn't have it. It is one 

 of the most important ; and yet see how 

 soon they lose it when domesticated, as, for in- 

 stance, ducks and geese. And then there are 

 some wild birds that seem to have lost the in- 

 cubating instinct, like the English cuckoo or 

 the American starling. They just drop their 

 eggs into some other bird's nest, and shirk the 



scatter as soon as they saw me, like a flock of 

 wild geese. You remember how Livingstone 

 tells us thit even the lions in Africa were 

 afraid of a man, and a lion is the king of 

 beasts, you know. This fear is a marvelous 

 instinct, I tell you. Who told those little fish 

 or the birds or the deer that there was danger 

 when a man comes near them ? Probably not 

 one of those little fish had ever seen a man 

 before." 



"That is mighty curious and pretty inter- 

 esting talking," said Fasset, who was listen- 

 ing from behind the stove. 



"But it is as true as Scripture," said the 

 deacon. " It is a divinely implanted instinct, 

 and is over every thing, over all his works." 



"And yet," said I, "when I opened my 

 barn-door the other morning our tabby cat 



