INSTINCT OF INSECTS; 519 
tween the exterior wooden shutters and panes of his elass 
hives, where, owing to the latter substance being a tolera- 
bly good conductor of heat, their progeny was at all times, 
and without any necessity of changing their situation, in 
a constant, equable, and sufficient temperature*. Bon- 
net observed the same fact. He found that a society of 
ants had piled up their young to the height of several 
inches, between the flannel-lined case of his glass hives 
and the glass. When disturbed they ran away with 
them, but always replaced them®. 
Tam persuaded that after duly considering these facts, 
you will agree with me that it is impossible consistently 
to refer them to instinct, or to account for them without 
supposing some stray ant, that had insinuated herself 
into this tropical crevice, first to have been struck with 
the thought of what a prodigious saving of labour and 
anxiety would occur to her compatriots by establishing 
their society here ;—that she had communicated her ideas 
to them ;—and that they had resolved upon an emigra- 
tion to this new-discovered country—this Madeira of 
ants—whose genial clime presented advantages which no 
other situation could offer. Neither instinct, nor any 
conceivable modification of instinct, could have taught 
the ants to avail themselves of a good fortune which but 
for the invention of glass hives would never have offered 
itself to a generation of these insects since the creation ; 
for there is nothing analogous in nature to the constant 
and equable warmth of such a situation, the heat of any 
accidental mass of fermenting materials soon ceasing, and 
no heat being given out from a society of bees when lodged 
@Reaum. v. 709. »b Quovres, ui. 416. 
