406 



INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



I have now instanced at least thirty distinct instincts with 

 which every individual of the nurses amongst the working- 

 bees is endowed ; and if to the account be added their care to 

 carry from the hive the dead bodies of any of the community ; 

 their pertinacity in their battles, in directing their sting at 

 those parts only of the bodies of their adversaries which are 

 penetrable by it ; their annual autumnal murder of the drones, 

 &c. &c- — it is certain that this number might be very consi- 

 derably increased, perhaps doubled. 



At the first view you will be inclined to suspect some 

 fallacy in this enumeration, and that this variety of actions 

 ought to be referred rather to some general principle, capable 

 of accommodating itself to different circumstances, than to so 

 many different kinds of instinct. But to what principle? 

 Not to reason, the faculty to which we assign this power of 

 varying accommodation. All the actions above adduced come 

 strictly under the description of instinctive actions, being all 

 performed by every generation of bees since the creation of 

 the world, and as perfectly a day or two after their birth as 

 at any subsequent period. And as the very essence of instinct 

 consists in the determinate character of the actions to which 

 it gives birth, it is clear that every distinctly different action 

 must be referred to a distinct instinct. Few will dispute that 

 the instinct which leads a duck to resort to the water is a 

 different instinct from that which leads her to sit upon her 

 eggs ; for the hen, though endowed with one, is not with the 

 other. In fact, they are as distinct and unconnected as the 

 senses of sight and smell ; and it appears to me that it would 

 be as contrary to philosophical accuracy of language in the 

 former case to call the two instincts modifications of each 

 other, as in the latter so to designate the two senses ; and as 

 we say that a deaf and blind man has fewer senses than other 

 men, so (strictly) we ought not to speak of instinct as one 

 faculty (though, to avoid circumlocution, I have myself often 

 employed this common mode of expression), or say that one 

 insect has a greater or less share of instinct than another, but 

 more or fewer instincts. That it is not always easy to deter- 

 mine what actions are to be referred to a distinct instinct and 

 what to a modification of an instinct, I am very ready to admit ; 



