INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 509 
proceed to the third head, under which I proposed to 
consider the instincts of insects—that of their extaordi- 
nary development. 
The development of some of the instincts of the larger 
animals, such as those of sex, is well known to depend 
upon their age and the peculiar state of the bodily or- 
gans; and to this, as before observed, the succession of 
different instincts in the same insect, in its larva and per- 
fect state, is closely analogous. But what I have now 
in view is that extraordinary development of instinct, 
which is dependent not upon the age or any change in 
the organization of the animal, but upon external events 
—which in individuals of the same species, age, and 
structure, in some circumstances slumbers unmoved, but 
may in others be excited to the most singular and unlook-~ 
ed-for action. In illustrating this property of instinct, 
which, as far as I am aware, is not known to occur in 
any of the larger animals, I shall confine myself as be- 
fore to the hive-bee; the only insect, indeed, in which 
its existence has been satisfactorily ascertained, though 
it is highly probable that other spécies living in societies 
may exhibit the same phenomenon. 
Several of the facts occurring in the history of bees 
might be referred to this head; but I shall here advert 
only to the treatment of the drones by the workers under 
different’ circumstances, and to the operations of the 
latter consequent wpon the irretrievable loss of the queen 
facts which have been before stated to you, but to the 
principal features of which my present argument makes 
it necessary that I should again direct your attention. 
If a hive of bees. be this year in possession of a queen 
