186 pbbsident's addeess. 



as the prime mover, are data sufficient to account for the phe- 

 nomena of Instinct. 



But when these postulates have been granted how much is 

 there, especially in the instincts of ganglionic creatures, of which 

 no account can be given ! Without insisting on the somewhat 

 trite subject of bee architecture and geometry, how account in 

 this way for the case quoted by Kirby and Spence, from the 

 elder Hiiber, in which some hundreds of bees engaged in build- 

 ing a comb, which is an aggregate of independent cells, on oppo- 

 site sides, and built from the bottom, to avoid a slip of glass 

 placed in their way, on reaching the proper distance from it, 

 without pause or hesitation bent the comb in a direction at 

 right angles to the plane they were working in. The feat was 

 accomplished by widening the cells on the convex side at the 

 bottom and contracting them at top, and reversing the process 

 on the concave side, and doing this by a graduated increment 

 and decrement till the proper curvature was attained. Here 

 was adaptative power put forth to meet an emergency — but 

 whose ? It must have sprung up simultaneously in each of 

 the thousand independent workers. To have proceeded from 

 one, without language, were inconceivable ; and indeed with 

 it, if that were possible, is an effort of constructive concert 

 which is simply inexplicable. Imagine an analogous departure 

 from an architect's plan taking place even after discussion and 

 explanation ! 



How account, again, for the transmission of a habit in the case 

 of neuter insects ? In the case of the bee, all the wonderful 

 operations of the hive are conducted by them. The male and 

 female have, and ought ex hypotJiesi to transmit, habits entirely 

 different. 



And how account for intelligent acts in ganglionic creatures 

 at all, which are destitute of the organ which, in the higher 

 animals, according to the experiments of Flourens and others, 

 is requisite to intelligence ? 



These difficulties, and many more which might be men- 

 tioned, are very perplexing; and they seem to force upon us 

 the reflection that whatever may be the proximate agency in 



