INSTINCTIVE ACTIONS. 339 



Thereby directed, the moth or butterfly, perhaps guided also 

 by her taste and smell, repairs directly to the flowers whereon 

 she loves most to take her pleasure ; and then, in opposition 

 to those very senses, proceeds, at Instinct's bidding, to the 

 flowerless shrub or vegetable, for deposit of her eggs on the 

 leaves best suited to support her unthought-of progen}^ 



With bees, ants, and other social insects, Instinct would not 

 appear, as with the Lepidoptera, to spring from the egg in full 

 maturity, not at least with the active and varied powers after- 

 wards acquired. In bee grubhood, also in that of wasps and 

 ants, the instincts of imbibing nourishment and of spinning 

 their cocoons would seem the only ones in activity, the place of 

 nil others being supplied by that watchful assiduity, also in- 

 stinctive, with which the labourers of the hive or ant-hill tend 

 upon the young of their communities. But no sooner does 

 the bee attain to maturity, than Instinct in full development, 

 like the form over which it is to bear rule, impels the wrings, 

 untried, to carry their possessor by the shortest cut to the 

 flowery fields of her earliest labour; then reconducts her 

 to her straw-built home as unerringly as though she, the 

 tyro gatherer, were the most veteran collector of the hive. 

 With this, the bee's first expedition, memory can have nought 

 to do ; if it had, the feat in question could no longer be attri- 

 butable to instinct instinct, it would seem, of a peculiar 

 character ; a wondrous tact, an occult faculty or sense, of which 



we, as not possessing, can form no conception. By animals 

 VOL. in. 21. 



