INTRODUCTION. 57 



the species executing them manifest in all other 

 respects, that they can never be referred to the 

 principle of reason. Neither can they be consider- 

 ed as the effects of imitation, for in many cases the 

 individuals performing them have never seen them 

 performed before, yet are they not the less exact on 

 that account. The actions of instinct of all the spe- 

 cies bears so little proportion to the general intelli- 

 gence of each, that the animals which evince, in re- 

 gard to their instincts, the greatest seeming wisdom 

 and real contrivance, discover upon all other occasions 

 the utmost stupidity. Different instincts are also so 

 exclusively the property of each species, that all the 

 individuals of it, preceding, contemporary, and suc- 

 cessive, carry them on precisely in the same man- 

 ner without improvement or deterioration. Thus 

 the working bees since the commencement of the 

 world have always constructed their ingenious edi- 

 fices in conformity with the rules of the highest 

 geometry, which are destined to the reception and 

 accommodation of a posterity not even their own. 

 The solitary bees also and the wasps form extremely 

 complicated nests, in which are deposited their 

 eggs ; from these in due time break forth a worm 

 which probably never beholds its parent, and is cer- 

 tainly in that state incapable of constructing a prison- 

 house similar to that which held it ; but this worm, 

 the moment its metamorphosis is completed, and it 

 is become a bee, will immediately construct a nest 

 precisely and in all points similar, in which to de- 

 posit its own egg. 



