364 — PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
which one sex may be known from the other. Thus secondary distin 
tive characters, such as the beard in men, and the breasts in women, are 
produced at a certain period of life ; and these secondary characters, in 
some instances, are changed for those of the other sex ; which does not 
arise from any action at the first formation, but takes place when the great 
command, “increase and multiply,” ceases to operate. Thus women in 
advanced life are sometimes distinguished by beards; and, after they haye 
done laying, hen-birds occasionally assume the plumage of the cock : this 
has been observed more than once by ornithologists, more particularly with 
respect to the pheasant and the pea-hen.1 For females to assume the 
secondary characters of males, seems certainly a more violent change, than 
for 1 worker bee, which may be regarded as a sterile female, in conse- 
quence of a certain process, to assume the secondary characters of a fertile 
female. 
With respect to the variations of instinct and character which result from 
the different modes of training the young bees that we are now considering, 
it would not, I think, be difficult to prove that causes at first sight equally 
inadequate have produced effects fully as important on the habits, tempers, 
and characters of men and other animals ; but as these will readily occur 
to you, I shall not now enlarge upon them. 
Did we know the causes of the various deviations, as to form and the 
like, observable in the three kingdoms of nature, and could apply them, we 
should be able to produce these deviations at our pleasure. This is exactly 
what the bees do. Their instinct teaches them that a certain kind of food, 
supplied to a grub inhabiting a certain dwelling, in a certain position, will 
produce certain effects upon it, rendering it different from what it would 
have been under ordinary circumstances, and fitted to answer their peculiar 
wants, 
I trust that these arguments and probabilities will in some degree reconcile 
you to what at first sight seems so extraordinary and extravagant a doc- 
trine. Ifnot yet fully satisfied, I can only recommend your having re- 
course to experiments yourself. Leaving you, therefore, to this best mode 
of proof, I shall proceed to another part of my history : — but first I must 
mention an experiment of Reaumur’s, which seems to come well in here. 
To ascertain whether the expectation of a queen was sufficient to keep 
alive the instinct and industry of the worker bees, he placed in a glazed 
hive some royal cells containing both grubs and pup, and then introduced 
about 1000 or 1500 workers and some drones. These workers, which 
had been deprived of their queen, at first destroyed some of the grubsin 
these cells ; but they clustered around two that were covered in, as if to 
impart warmth to the pup they contained ; and on the following day they 
began to work upon the portions of comb with which he had supplied 
them, in order to fix and lengthen them. For two or three days the work 
went on very leisurely, but afterwards their labours assumed their usual 
character of indefatigable industry.?_ There is no difficulty, therefore, when 
a hive loses its sovereign, to supply the bees with an object that will interest 
them, and keep their works in progress. 
There are a few other facts with respect to the lary and pupz of the 
1 Philos, Trans. 1792, viii. 167. Hunter On certain Parts of the Animal Gico- 
nomy, p. 65. Latham, Synops, ii, 672. t. 60. 
2 Reaum, vy, 271, 
