18 IMPERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
is no one that nature, by a different organization and 
ampler dimensions, and a more august form, has destined 
to this high office. ‘The only question remaining is, whe- 
ther one be elected from the rest by common consent as 
their leader, or whether their instinct impels them to fol- 
low the first that takes flight or alights. This last is the 
learned Bochart’s opinion, and seems much the most rea- 
sonable*. The absurdity of the other supposition, that 
an election is made, will appear from such queries as 
these, at which you may smile—Whoare the electors ? 
Are the myriads of millions all consulted, or is the elec- 
tive franchise confined to a few? Who holds the courts 
and takes the votes? Who casts them up and declares 
the result? When is the election made ?—The larve 
appear to be as much under government as the perfect 
insect.—Is the monarch then chosen by his peers when 
they first leave the egg and emerge from their subter- 
ranean caverns? or have larva, pupa, and imago each 
their separate king? The account given us in Scripture 
is certainly much the most probable, that the locusts have 
no king, though they observe as much order and regu- 
larity in their movements as if they were under mili- 
tary discipline, and had a ruler over them>. Some spe- 
cies of ants, as we learn from the admirable history of 
them by M. P. Huber, though they go forth by common 
consent upon their military expeditions, yet the order of 
their columns keeps perpetually changing; so that those 
who lead the van at the first setting out, soon fall into 
the rear, and others take their-place: their successors do 
the same; and such is the constant order of their march. 
* Bochart, Mierozoic, ubi supra. > Proverbs xxx, 27. 
