470 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 
just inference, if the statement from which it is drawn 
were accurate; but that it is not so, is known to every 
naturalist acquainted with the fact that many different 
species of bees store up honey in the hottest climates ; 
and that there is no authentic instance on record of the 
hive-bees’ altering in any age or climate their peculiar 
operations, which are now in the coldest and in the hot- 
test regions precisely what they were in Greece in the 
time of Aristotle, and in Italy in the days of Virgil. In- 
deed the single fact, depending on the assertions of such 
accurate observers as Reaumur and Swammerdam, that 
a bee as soon after it is disclosed from the pupa as its 
body is dried and its wings expanded, and before it is 
possible that it should have received any instruction, be- 
takes itself to the collecting of honey or the fabrication of 
a cell, which operations it performs as adroitly as the 
most hoary inhabitant of the hive, is alone sufficient to 
set aside all the hear-say statements of Dr. Darwin, and 
should have led him, as it must every logical reasoner, 
to the conclusion, that these and similar actions of ani- 
mals cannot be referred to any reasoning process, nor 
be deemed the result of observation and experience.— 
It is true, it does not follow that animals, besides in- 
stinct, have not, in a degree, the faculty of reason also; 
and as I shall in the sequel endeavour to show, many of 
the actions of insects can be adequately explained on no 
other supposition. But to deny, as Dr. Darwin does, 
that the art with which the caterpillar weaves its cocoon, 
or the unerring care with which the moth places her 
eggs upon food that she herself can never use, are the 
effects of instinct, is as unphilosophical and contrary to 
fact, as to insist that the eagerness with which, though 
