fE0 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 
therefore, we find them, in these extraordinary and improbable emergencies, 
_ still availing themselves of the means apparently best calculated for 
ensuring their object ; and if in addition they seem in some cases to gain 
knowledge by experience; if they can communicate information to each 
other ; and if they are endowed with memory, —it appears impossible to 
deny that they are possessed of reason. I shall now produce facts in 
proof of each of these positions; not by any means all that might be 
adduced, but a few of the most striking that occur to me. 
First, then, insects often, in cases not likely to be provided for by in- 
stinct, adopt means evidently designed for effecting their object. 
A certain degree of warmth is necessary to hatch a hen’s eggs, and we 
give her little credit for reason in sitting upon them for this purpose. But 
if any one had ever seen 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 wo- 
man, a Hindoo metaphysician at least could not doubt of her body, how- 
ever 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 extraordinary and as indicative of reason as would be that sup- 
posed inahen. A certain degree of warmth is required for the exclusion 
and rearing of their eggs, larvee, and pupa; and in their ordinary abodes, 
a8 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 themselves all this trouble, by establishing their 
colonies between the exterior wooden shutters and panes of his glass 
hives, where, owing to the latter substance being a tolerably good con- 
ductor of heat, their progeny was at all times, and without any necessity 
of changing their situation, in a constant, equable, and sufficient tempera- 
ture? Bonnet 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 haye been struck with the thought 
of what a prodigious saving of labour and anxiety would occur to her com- 
patriots by establishing their society here; that she had communicated her 
ideas to them ; and that they had resolved upon an emigration to this new- 
discovered country — this Madeira of ants — whose genial clime presented 
1 See Fischer's Beschreibung eines Hulns mit menscheniihnlichem Profile, 8vo. St 
Petersburg, 1816 ; and a translation in Thomson’s Annals of Phil. vii. 241. 
2 Reaum. v. 709. 5 (Euvres, ii. 416, 
