550 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 
combs, when becoming heavy, to the top of the hive with mitys, in the time 
of Aristotle and Pliny as they do now; and there is every reason to believe 
that then, as now, they occasionally varied their procedures, by securing 
them with wax or with propolis only, either added to the upper range of 
cells, or disposed in braces and ties to the adjoining combs. But if in thus 
proceeding they were guided by reason, why not under certain circumstances 
adopt other modes of strengthening their combs ?_ Why not, when wax and 
ropolis are scarce, employ mud, which they might see the martin avail 
herself of so successfully? Or why should it not come into the head of 
some hoary denizen of the hive, that a little of the mortar with which his 
careful master plasters the crevices between his habitation and its stand 
might answer the end of mitys? Si seulement ils élevoient une fois des 
cibanes quarrées” (says Bonnet, when speaking as to what faculty the 
works of the beaver are to be referred), “ mais ce sont éternellement des 
cAbanes rondes ou ovales:”1 and so we might say of the phenomena in 
question— Show us but one instance of bees having substituted mud or 
mortar for mitys, pissoceros, or propolis, or wooden props for waxen ties, 
and there could be no doubt of their being here guided by reason. But 
since no such instance is on record ; since they are still confined to the 
same limits—however surprising the range of these limits—as they were 
two thousand years ago ; and since the bees emerged from their pupa but 
a few hours before will set themselves as adroitly to work, and pursue their 
operations as scientifically as their brethren, who can boast the experience 
of a long life of twelve montks’ duration ; — we must still regard these 
actions as variations of instinct. 
Tn the second place, no degree of reason that we can with any share of 
probability attribute to bees could be competent to the performance of 
labours so complicated as those we have been considering, and which, if 
the result of reason, would inyolve the most extensive and varied know- 
ledge in the agents. Suppose a man to have attained by long practice the 
art of modelling wax into a congeries of uniform hexagonal cells, with 
pyramidal bottoms composed each of three rhombs, resembling the cells of 
workers among bees. Let him now be set to make a congeries of similar 
but larger cells (answering to the male cells), and unite these with the 
former by other hexagonal cells, so that there should be no disruption in 
the continuity or regularity of the whole assemblage, and no vacant inter- 
vals or patching at the junctions either of the tubes or the bottoms 
of the cells;—and you would have set him no very easy task —a task, in 
short, which it may be doubted if he would satisfactorily perform in a 
twelvemonth, though gifted with a clear head and a competent store of 
geometrical knowledge, and which, if destitute of these requisites, it may 
be safely asserted that he would never perform at all. Wow then can 
we imagine it possible that this difficult problem, and others of a simi- 
lar kind, can be so completely and exactly solved by animals of which 
some are not two days old, others not a week, and probably none a year? 
nn conclusion is irresistible—it is not reason but instinct that is their 
guide. 
The second head, under which I proposed contrasting the instinct of 
insects with those of the larger animals, was that of their xwmber in the 
same individual. In the latter this is for the most part very limited, not 
1 Quvres, ix. 159. 
