518 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 
A certain degree of warmth is necessary to hatch a hen’s 
egos, and we give her little credit for reason in sitting 
upon them for this purpose. But if any one had ever 
yeen a hen make her nest in a heap of fermenting dung, 
among the bark of a hot-bed, or in the vicinity of a 
baker’s oven, where, the heat being as well adapted as 
the stoves of the Egyptians to bring her chickens into 
life, she left off the habit of her race, and saved herself 
the trouble of sitting upon them,—we should certainly 
pronounce her a reasoning hen: and if this hen had 
chanced to be that very one figured and so elaborately 
described by Professor Fischer, with the profile of an old 
woman, a Hlindoo metaphysician at least could not doubt 
of her body, however hen-like, being in truth directed 
in its operations by the soul of some quondam amateur 
of poultry-breeding. Now societies of ants have more 
than once exhibited a deviation from their usual instinct, 
which to me seems quite as extraordimary and as indica- 
tive of reason as would be that supposed ina hen. A 
certain degree of warmth is required for the exclusion 
and rearing of their eggs, larvee and pupee; and in their 
ordinary abodes, as you have been already told”, they 
undergo great daily labour in removing their charge to 
different parts of the nest, as its temperature is affected 
by the presence or absence of the sun. But Reaumur, 
in refuting the common notion of ants being injurious to 
bees, tells us that, societies of the former often saved them- 
selves all this trouble, by establishing their colonies be- 
* See Fischer’s Beschreibung eines Huhns mit menschenahnlichem 
Profile, 8vo, St. Pe Su ans 1816, and a translation in Thomsen’s 
Annals of Phil. viii. 241. 
> Vox. I. 4th Ed. 364. 
