INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



379 



different species of bees store up honey in the hottest climates ; 

 and that there is no authentic instance on record of the 

 hive-bees' altering, in any age or climate, their peculiar oper- 

 ations, which are now in the coldest and in the hottest regions 

 precisely what they were in Greece in the time of Aristotle, 

 and in Italy in the days of Virgil. Indeed the single fact, 

 depending on the assertions of such accurate observers as 

 Reaumur and Swammerdam, that a bee as soon after it is 

 disclosed from the pupa as its body is dried and its wings 

 expanded, and before it is possible that it should have 

 received any instruction, betakes itself to the collecting of 

 honey or the fabrication of a cell, which operation it performs 

 as adroitly as the most hoary inhabitant of the hive, is alone 

 sufficient to set aside all the hearsay statements of Dr. Darwin, 

 and should have led him, as it must every logical reasoner, 

 to the conclusion, that these and similar actions of animals 

 cannot be referred to any reasoning process, nor be deemed 

 the result of observation and experience. It is true, it does 

 not follow that animals, besides instinct, have not, in a 

 degree, the faculty of reason also ; and, as I shall in the 

 sequel endeavour to show, many of the actions of insects can 

 be adequately explained on no other supposition. But to 

 deny, as Dr. Darwin does, that the art with which the cater- 

 pillar weaves its cocoon, or the unerring care with which the 

 moth places her eggs upon food that she herself can never 

 use, are the effects of instinct, is as unphilosophical and 

 contrary to fact as to insist that the eagerness with which, 

 though it has never tasted milk, the infant seeks for its 

 mother's breast, is the effect of reason. 



Instinct, then, is not the result of a plastic nature ; of a 

 system of machinery ; of diseased bodily action ; of models 

 impressed on the brain ; nor of organic shootings-out: — it is 

 not the effect of the habitual determination for ages of the 

 nervous fluid to certain organs ; nor is it either the impulse of 

 the Deity, or reason. Without pretending to give a logical 

 definition of it, which, while we are ignorant of the essence of 

 reason, is impossible, we may call the instincts of animals those 

 unknown faculties implanted in their constitution by the 

 Creator, by which, independent of instruction, observation, or 



