INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 493 
and again resume the former? These are questions 
which no known system can explain?*. 
Here again, as observed in a former instance, the 
wonder would be less, if every comb contained a certain 
number of transition and of male cells, constantly situa- 
ted in one and the same part of it: but this is far from 
being the case. ‘The event which alone, at whatever 
period it may happen, seems to determine the bees to 
construct male cells, is the oviposition of the queen. So 
long as she continues to lay the eggs of workers not a 
male cell is founded; but as soon as she is about to lay 
male egos, the workers seem aware of it, and you then 
see them form their cells irregularly, impart to them by 
degrees a greater diameter, and at length prepare suitable 
ranges of cradles for all the male race>.—You must per- 
ceive how absurd it would be to refer this astonishing 
variation of instinct to any mere change in the sensations 
of the bees; and to what far-fetched and gratuitous sup- 
positions we must be reduced, if we adopt any such ex- 
planation. We can but refer it to an instinct of which 
we know nothing; and so referring it, can we help ex- 
claiming with Huber, “Such is the grandeur of the 
views and of the means of ordaining wisdom, that it is 
not by a minute exactness that she marches to her end, 
but proceeds from irregularity to irregularity, compen- 
sating one by another: the admeasurements are made 
on high, the apparent errors appreciated by a divine 
geometry; and order often results from partial diversity. 
This is not the first instance which science has presented 
to us of preordained irregularities which astonish our ig- 
a Huber, ii. 221-226, 244-247. b Thid. 1. 226. 
