416 



INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



and saved herself the trouble of sitting upon them, — we should 

 certainly pronounce her a reasoning hen ; and if this hen had 

 chanced to be that very one figured and so elaborately de- 

 scribed by Professor Fischer with the profile of an old woman l , 

 a Hindoo metaphysician at least could not doubt of her body, 

 however hen-like, being in truth directed in its operations by 

 the soul of some quondam amateur of poultry-breeding. Now 

 societies of ants have more than once exhibited a deviation 

 from their usual instinct, which to me seems quite as extra- 

 ordinary and as indicative of reason as would be that supposed 

 in a hen. A certain degree of warmth is required for the ex- 

 clusion and rearing of their eggs, larvae, and pupae ; and in 

 their ordinary abodes, as you have been already told, they 

 undergo great daily labour in removing their charge to dif- 

 ferent parts of the nest, as its temperature is affected by the 

 presence or absence of the sun. But Reaumur, in refuting 

 the common notion of ants being injurious to bees, tells us 

 that societies of the former often saved themselves all this 

 trouble, by establishing their colonies between the exterior 

 wooden shutters and panes of his glass hives, where, owing to 

 the latter substance being a tolerably good conductor of heat, 

 their progeny was at all times, and without any necessity of 

 changing their situation, in a constant, equable, and sufficient 

 temperature. 2 Bonnet observed the same fact. He found 

 that a society of ants had piled up their young to the height 

 of several inches, between the flannel-lined case of his glass 

 hives and the glass. When disturbed they ran away with 

 them, but always replaced them. 3 



I am persuaded that, after duly considering these facts, you 

 will agree with me that it is impossible consistently to refer 

 them to instinct, or to account for them without supposing 

 some stray ant, that had insinuated herself into this tropical 

 crevice, first to have been struck with the thought of what a 

 prodigious saving of labour and anxiety would occur to her 

 compatriots by establishing their society here; that she 

 had communicated her ideas to them; and that they had 



1 See Fischer's Beschreibung ernes Hnhns mit menschen'dhnlichem Profile, 8vo. 

 St. Petersburg, 1816 ; and a translation in Thomson's Annals of Phil. viii. 241. 



2 Reaum. v. 709. 3 (Euvres, ii. 416. 



