400 



INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



their combs ? Why not, when wax and propolis 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 elevoient une fois des cabanes quarrees " 

 (says Bonnet, when speaking as to what faculty the works of 

 the beaver are to be referred), " mais ce sont eternellement 

 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 pupae 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 ex- 

 perience of along life of twelve months' duration ; — we must 

 still regard these actions as variations of instinct. 



In 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 

 involve the most extensive and varied knowledge 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 (answer- 

 ing 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 intervals or patching at the junctions either of the 

 tubes or the bottoms of the cells; — and you would have set 



1 CEuvres, ix. 159. 



