INSECTS IN GENERAL. 103 



view, they are impelled to tlie performance of certain actions 

 tending to the well-being of the individual and the preserva- 

 tion of the species ; and with this description, which is, in 

 fact, merely a confession of ignorance, we must, in the pre- 

 sent state of metaphysical science, content ourselves. 



" I here say nothing of that supposed connection of the in- 

 stinct of animals with their sensations, which has been intro- 

 duced 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 ope- 

 ration of the senses, or that internal feeling called appetite ? 

 But secondly, this connection of instinct with bodily sensa- 

 tion, 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, such as the laying of the eggs of 

 the flesh-fly in the flowers of Stapelia hirsuta instead of in 

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

 fly in snuff* instead of dung ; for in these instances the smell 

 seems so clearly the guide that it leads into error. But what 

 connection between sensation and instinct do we see in the 

 conduct of the working bees which fabricate some of the cells 

 in a comb larger than others expressly to contain the eggs 

 and future grubs of drones, though those eggs are not laid 

 by themselves, and are still in the ovaries of the queen ? So 

 we may plausibly enough conjecture that the fury with which, 

 in ordinary circumstances, at a certain period of the year the 

 working bees are inspired towards the drones, is the eff'ect of 

 some disagreeable smell or emanation proceeding from them 

 at that particular time ; but how can we explain on similar 

 grounds the fact that in a hive deprived of a queen no mas- 



