INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 503 
Several distinct instincts, again, are called into action 
in the important business of feeding the young brood. 
One teaches them to swallow pollen, not to satisfy the 
calls of hunger, but that it may undergo in their sto- 
mach an elaboration fitting it for the food of the grubs ; 
and another to regurgitate it when duly concocted, and 
to administer it to their charge, proportioning the sup- 
ply to the age and condition of the recipients. A third 
informs them when the young grubs have attained their 
full growth, and directs them to cover their ceils with a 
waxen lid, convex in the male cells, but nearly flat in 
those of workers; and by a fourth, as soon as the young 
bees have burst into day, they are impelled to clean out 
the deserted tenements and to make them ready for new 
occupants. 
Numerous as are the instincts I have already enume- 
rated, the list must yet include those connected with that 
mysterious principle which binds the working bees of a 
hive to their queen:—the singular imprisonment in 
which they retain the young queens that are to lead off 
a swarm, until their wings be sufficiently expanded to 
of this gentleman, who imagined that from some accident the animal 
had never been shipped on board the Ister. On the return of this 
vessel to repair, the mystery was explained; and it turned out that 
Valiante (so the ass was called) had not only swam safely to shore, 
but, without guide, compass, or travelling map, had found his way 
from Point de Gat to Gibraltar, a distance of more than two hundred 
miles, which he had never traversed before, through a mountainous 
and intricate country, intersected by streams, and in so short a pe- 
riod that he could not have made one false turn. His not having 
been stopped on the road was attributed to the circumstance of his 
having been formerly used to whip criminals upon, which was indi- 
cated to the peasants, who have a superstitious horror of such asses, 
by the holes in his ears, to which the persons flogged were tied. 
