IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 17 
think without sufficient reason, by several travellers. 
Thus Benjamin Bullivant, in his observations on the 
Natural History of New England®, says that “the lo- 
custs have a kind of regimental discipline, and as it were 
some commanders, which show greater and more splen- 
did wings than the common ones, and arise first when 
pursued by the fowls or the feet of the traveller, as I have 
often seriously remarked.” And in like terms Jackson 
observes, that “they have a government amongst them- 
selves similar to that of the bees and ants; and when the 
(Sultan Jerraad) king of the locusts rises, the whole body 
follow him, not one solitary straggier being left behind>.” 
But that locusts have leaders, like the bees or ants, di- 
stinguished from the rest by the size and splendour of 
their wings, is a circumstance that has not yet been esta- 
blished by any satisfactory evidence; indeed, very strong 
reasons may be urged against it. The nations of bees 
and ants, it must be observed, are housed together in 
one nest or hive, the whole population of which is ori- 
ginally derived from one common mother, and the leaders 
of the swarms in each are the females. But the armies 
of locusts, though they herd together, travel together, and 
feed together, consist of an infinity of separate families, 
all derived from different mothers, who have laid their 
eggs in separate cells or houses in the earth; so that there 
is little or no analogy between the societies of locusts and 
those of bees and ants; and this pretended sultan is some- 
thing quite different from the queen-bee or the female 
ants. It follows, therefore, that as the locusts have no 
common mother, like the bees, to lead their swarms, there 
* In Philos. Trans. for 1698. b Jackson’s Marocco, 5). 
VOL. Il. G 
