INSTINCT OF INSECTs, 511 
case even from a society of men; and is obviously un- 
warrantable. The only probable supposition is, clearly, 
that a new instinct is developed suited to the extraordi- 
nary situation in which the community stands, leading 
them now to regard with kindness the drones, for whom 
otherwise they would have felt the most violent aversion. 
In this instance, indeed, it would perhaps be more 
strictly correct to say (which, however, is equally won- 
derful) that the old instinct was extinguished; but in the 
case of the loss of a queen, to which I am next to advert, 
which is followed by positive operations, the extraordi- 
nary development ofa new and peculiar instinct is indis- 
putable. 
In a hive which no untoward event has deprived of its 
queen, the workers take no other active steps in the edu- 
cation of her successors—those of which one is to occupy 
her place when she has flown off at the head of a new 
swarm in spring—than to prepare a certain number of 
cells of extraordinary capacity for their reception while in 
the egg, and to feed them when become grubs with a 
peculiar food until they have attained maturity. ‘This, 
therefore, is their ordinary instinct; and it may happen 
that the workers of a hive may have no necessity for a 
long series of successive generations to exercise any other. 
But suppose them to lose their queen. Far from sinking 
into that inactive despair which was formerly attributed 
to them, after the commotion which the rapidly-circu- 
lated news of their calamity gave birth to has subsided, 
they betake themselves with an alacrity from which man 
when under misfortune might deign to take a lesson, to 
the active reparation of their loss. Several ordinary cells, 
