562 INSTINCT OF INSECTS, 
authority of M. Cossigny, who witnessed it in the Isle of France, where 
the Sphecina ave accustomed to bury the bodies of cockroaches along with 
their eggs for provision for their young. He sometimes saw an insect of 
this tribe attempt to drag after it into its hole a dead cockroach, which was 
too big to be made to enter by all its efforts. After several ineffectual 
trials the animal-came out, cut off its elytra and some of its legs, and thus 
reduced in compass drew in its prey without difficulty." 
Under this head I shall mention but one fact more. A friend of 
Gleditsch, the observer of the singular economy of the burying beetle 
(Necrophorus vespillo) related in a former letter, being desirous of drying a 
dead toad, fixed it to the top of a piece of wood which he stuck into the 
ground. But, a short time afterwards, he found that a body of these inde- 
fatigable little sextons had cireumvented him in spite of his precautions. 
Not being able to reach the toad, they had undermined the base of the 
stick until it fell, and then buried both stick and toad? 
In the second place, insects gain knowledge from experience, which 
would be impossible if they were not gifted with some portion of reason. 
In proof of their thus profiting, I shall select from the numerous facts that 
might be brought forward four only, one of which has been already slightly 
adverted to. 
M. P. Huber, in his valuable paper in the sixth volume of the Linnean 
Transactions 3 states that he has seen large humble-bees, when unable from 
the size of their head and thorax to reach to the bottom of the long tubes 
of the flowers of beans, go directly to the calyx, pierce it as well as the tube 
with the exterior horny parts of their proboscis, and then insert their pro- 
boscis itself into the orifice and abstract the honey. They thus flew from 
flower to flower, piercing the tubes from without, and sucking the nectar ; 
while smaller humble-bees, or those with a longer proboscis, entered in at 
the top of the corolla. Now, from this statement, it seems evident that 
the larger bees did not pierce the bottoms of the flowers until they had 
ascertained by trial that they could not reach the nectar from the top; but 
that having once ascertained by experience that the flowers of beans are too 
strait to admit them, they then, without further attempts in the ordinary 
way, pierced the bottoms of a// the flowers which they wished to rifle of 
their sweets. M. Aubert du Petit-Thouars observed that humble-bees and 
the carpenter-bee (Xylocopa* violacea) gained access in a similar manner to 
the nectar of Antirrhinum Linaria and majus and Mirabilis Jalapa, as do the 
common bees of the Isle of France to that of Canna indica®; and I have 
myself more than once noticed holes at the base of the long nectaries of 
Aquilegia vulgaris, which 1 attribute to the same agency.® 
before flying away with them, and that, consequently, the above fact proves no- 
thing as to the reason of insects. Here, however, I must beg to differ from 
him ; for supposing Dr. Darwin’s statement to be accurate, which, from the 
minute particulars into which he enters, we have no right to doubt, the cireum- 
stances of the wasp’s first violating its natural instinct by flying away with the fly 
before cutting off its wings, and then, on finding the wind act upon them, alighting 
to do what it had neglected at first, cannot well be explained except on the suppo- 
sition of some reasoning process having passed through its mind. In any case, there 
is no need of this particular fact to prove the existence of reason in insects, of which 
such numerous other instances have been adduced, 
1 Reaumm., vi. 283. 2 Gleditsch, Physic. Bot. Gcon, Abhandl. iii. 220, 
3 Pp, 222. 4 Anis * *. d, 2. B, K. 5 Nouv. Bul. des Sciences, i, 45. 
6 See an interesting article by Mr. C. Darwin in the Gardener’s Chronicle, 1841, 
