INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



377 



need I advert to the notable discovery of some pupils of 

 Professor Winckler, that the brain, alias the soul, of a bee or 

 spider is impressed at the birth of the insect with certain 

 geometrical figures, according to which models its works are 

 constructed — a position which these gentlemen demonstrate 

 very satisfactorily by a memorable experiment in which they 

 themselves were able to hear triangles. 



It is as unnecessary to waste any words in refutation of the 

 nonsense (for it deserves no better name) of BufFon, who 

 refers the instinct of societies of insects to the circumstance 

 of a great number of individuals being brought into existence 

 at the same time, all acting with equal force, and obliged by 

 the similarity of their internal and external structure, and 

 the conformity of their movements, to perform each the same 

 actions, in the same place, in the most convenient mode for 

 themselves, and least inconvenient for their companions ; 

 whence results a regular, well-proportioned, and symmetrical 

 structure : and he gravely tells us that the boasted hexagonal 

 cells of bees are produced by the reciprocal pressure of the 

 cylindrical bodies of these insects against each other ! ! 1 



Nor is it requisite to advert at length to the explanations 

 of instinctive actions more recently given by StefFens, a 

 German author (one of the transcendentalists, I conclude, 

 from the incomprehensibility of his book to my ordinary 

 intellect), who says that the products of the vaunted instinct 

 of insects are nothing but " shootings out of inorganic animal 

 masses " (anorgische a7ischusse) 2 ; and by Lamarck 3 , who 

 attributes them to certain inherent inclinations arising from 

 habits impressed upon the organs of the animals concerned in 

 producing them, by the constant efflux towards these organs 

 of the nervous fluid, which, during a series of ages, has been 

 displaced in their endeavours to perform certain actions 

 which their necessities have given birth to. The mere 



1 Hist. Nat. Edit. 1785, v. 277. 



2 Beitrage zur innern Naturgeschichte der Erde, 1801, p. 298. 



3 In his Philosophie Zoologique, Paris, 1809 (ii. 325.) — a work which every 

 zoologist will, I think, join with me in regretting should be devoted to meta- 

 physical disquisitions built on the most gratuitous assumptions, instead of com- 

 prising that luminous generalisation of facts relative to the animal world which 

 is so great a desideratum, and for performing which satisfactorily this eminent 

 naturalist is so well qualified. 



