570 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



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. Indeed 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 possible 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 hav^e led him, as it must every logi- 

 cal 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 endeavor 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 effect 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 

 machinery ; of diseased bodily action ; of models impressed on the brain; 

 nor of organic shootings-out : — it is not the effect of the habitual deter- 

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

 the impulse of the Deity, or reason. ^V'iihout pretending to give a logi- 

 cal definition of it, which, while we are ignorant of the essence of reason, 

 is impossible, we may call the instincts of animals those unknown facul- 

 ties implanted in their constitution by the Creator, by which, independent 

 of instruction, observation, 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 description, which is, in fact, merely a confession 

 of ignorance, we must, in the present state of metaphysical science, con- 

 tent ourselves. 



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

 animals with their sensations, which lias been introduced into many defini- 

 tions 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 



