INSTINCL’ OF INSECTS. 505 
annual autumnal murder of the drones, &c. &c.—it is 
certain that this number might be very considerably in- 
creased, perhaps doubled. 
At the first view you will be inclined to suspect some 
fallacy in this enumeration, and that this variety of ac- 
tions ought to be referred rather to some general prin- 
ciple, capable of accommodating itself to different cir- 
cumstances, than to so many different kinds of instinct. 
But to what principle? Not to reason, the faculty to 
which we assign this power of varying accommodation. 
All the actions above adduced come strictly under the 
description of instinctive actions, being all performed by 
every generation of bees since the creation of the world, 
and as perfectly a day or two after their birth as at any 
subsequent period. And as the very essence of instinct 
consists in the determinate character of the actions to 
which it gives birth, it is clear that every distinctly diffe- 
rent action must be referred to a distinct instinct. Few 
will dispute that the instinct which leads a duck to re- 
sort to the water is a different instinct from that which 
leads her to sit upon her eggs; for the hen though en- 
dowed with one is not with the other. In fact, they are 
as distinct and unconnected as the senses of sight and 
smell; and it appears to me that it would be as contrary 
to philosophical accuracy of language, in the former case 
to call the two instincts modifications of each other, as 
in the latter so to designate the two senses; and as we 
say that a deaf and blind man has fewer senses than other 
men, so (strictly) we ought not to speak of instinct as one 
faculty (though to avoid circumlocution I have myself 
often employed this common mode of expression), or say 
that one insect has a greater or less share of instinct than 
