516 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 
trust the more fatiguing part of the chase to the younger, 
and to place himself so as to meet the hare in her 
doubles *.” 
As another instance of these mixed actions in which 
both reason and instinct seem concerned, but the former 
more decidedly, may be cited the account which Huber 
gives of the manner in which the bees of some of his 
neighbours protected themselves against the attacks of 
the death’s-head moth (Sphinx Atropos), laid before you 
in aformer letter®, by so closing the entrance of the hive 
with walls, arcades, casements, and bastions, built of a 
mixture of wax and propolis, that these insidious ma- 
rauders could no longer intrude themselves. 
Wecan scarcely attribute these elaborate fortifications 
to reason simply; for it appears that bees have recourse 
to a similar defensive expedient when attacked even by 
other bees; and the means employed seem too subtle and 
too well adapted to the end to be the result of this faculty 
in a bee. 
But on the other hand, if it be most probable that in 
this instance instinct was chiefly concerned, if we impar- 
tially consider the facts, it seems impossible to deny that 
reason had some share in the operations. Pure instinct 
would have taught the bees to fortify themselves on the 
Jirst attack. If the occupants of a hive had been taken 
unawares by these gigantic aggressors one night, on the 
second, at least, the entrance should have been barri- 
cadoed. But it appears clear from the statement of 
Huber, that it was not until the hives had been repeat- 
edly attacked and robbed of nearly their whole stock of 
* Hume’s Essay on the Reason of Animals. » See above, p. 267. 
