INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 495 
then comprehend the difficulties which our little archi- 
tects had to encounter. The resources of their instinct, 
however, were adequate to the emergency. They made 
the cells on the convew side of the bent part of the comb 
much larger, and those on the concave side much smaller 
than usual; the former having three or four times the 
diameter of the latter. But this was not all. As the 
bottoms of the small and large cells were as usual com- 
mon to both, the cells were not regular prisms, but the 
small ones considerably wider at the bottom than at the 
top, and conversely in the large ones !—What concep- 
tion can we form of so wonderful a flexibility of instinct? 
How, as Huber asks, can we comprehend the mode in 
which such a crowd of labourers, occupied at the same 
time on the edge of the comb, could agree to give to it 
the same curvature from one extremity to the other; or 
how they could arrange together to construct on one face 
cells so small, while on the other they imparted to them 
such enlarged dimensions ?—And how can we feel ade- 
quate astonishment that they should have the art of 
making cells of such different sizes correspond? ? 
After this long but I flatter myself not wholly unin- 
teresting enumeration, you will scarcely hesitate to ad- 
mit that insects, and of these the bee pre-eminently, are 
endowed with a much more exquisite and flexible in- 
stinct than the larger animals. But you may be here led 
to ask, Can all this be referred to instinct? Is not this 
pliability to circumstances—this surprising adaptation of 
means for accomplishing an end—yather the result of 
reason ? 
4 Huber, ti. 219—. 
