INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 467 
I. It is quite superfluous at this day to controvert the 
explanations of instinct advanced by some of the philo- 
sophers of the old school, such as that of Cudworth, who 
referred this faculty to a certain plastic nature; or that 
of Des Cartes, who contended that animals are mere 
machines. Nor, I fancy, would you thank me for en- 
tering into an elaborate refutation of the doctrine of 
Mylius, that many of the actions deemed instinctive are 
the effect of painful corporeal feelings; the cocoon of a 
caterpillar, for instance, being the result of a fit of the 
colic, produced by a superabundance of the gum which 
fills its silk-bags, and which exuding, is twisted round it, 
by its uneasy contortions, into a regular ball. Still less 
need I advert to the notable discovery of some pupils of 
Professor Winckler, that the brain, alias the soul, of a 
bee or spider, is impressed at the birth of the insect with 
certain geometrical figures, according to which models 
its works are constructed,—a position which these gen- 
tlemen demonstrate very satisfactorily by a memorable 
experiment in which they themselves were able to hear 
triangles. 
It is as unnecessary to waste any words in refutation 
of the nonsense (for it deserves no better name) of Buf- 
fon, who refers the instinct of societies of insects to the 
circumstance of a great ‘number of individuals being 
brought into existence at the same time, all acting with 
equal force, and obliged by the similarity of ‘their inter- 
nal and external structure, and the conformity of their 
movements, to perform each the same actions, in the 
same place, in the most convenient mode for themselves, 
and least inconvenient for their companions; whence 
results a regular, well-proportioned, and symmetrical 
Oy Tat 
