INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



417 



resolved upon an emigration to this new-discovered country 

 — this Madeira of ants — whose genial clime presented 

 advantages which no other situation could offer. Neither 

 instinct, nor any conceivable modification of instinct, could 

 have taught the ants to avail themselves of a good fortune 

 which but for the invention of glass hives would never have 

 offered itself to a generation of these insects since the 

 creation ; for there is nothing analogous in nature to the 

 constant "and equable warmth of such a situation, the heat 

 of any accidental mass of fermenting materials soon ceasing, 

 and no heat being given out from a society of bees when 

 lodged in a hollow tree, their natural residence. The 

 conclusion, then, seems irresistible, that reason must have 

 been their guide, inducing a departure from their natural 

 instinct as extraordinary as would be that of a hen which 

 should lay her eggs in a hot-bed, and cease to sit upon 

 them. 



The adaptation of means to an end not likely to have been 

 provided for by instinct is equally obvious in the ingenious 

 mode by which a nest of humble-bees propped up their 

 tottering comb, the particulars of which having before men- 

 tioned to you, I need not here repeat. 



There is perhaps no surer criterion of reason than, after 

 having tried one mode of accomplishing a purpose, adopting 

 another more likely to succeed. Insects are able to stand 

 this test. A bee which Huber watched, while soldering the 

 angles of a cell with propolis, detached a thread of this 

 material, with which she entered the cell. Instinct would 

 have taught her to separate it of the exact length required ; 

 but after applying it to the angle of the cell, she found it too 

 long, and cut off a portion so as to fit it to her purpose. 1 



This is a very simple instance; but one such fact is as 

 decisive in proof of reason as a thousand more complex, and 

 of such there is no lack. Dr. Darwin (whose authority in 

 the present case depending not on hearsay, but his own 

 observation, may be here taken) informs us, that walking 

 one day in his garden, he perceived a wasp upon the gravel 



VOL. II. 



1 Huber, ii. 268. 

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