INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



419 



cockroach, which was too big to be made to enter by all 

 its efforts. After several ineffectual trials the animal came 

 out, cut off its elytra and some of its legs, and thus re- 

 duced in compass drew in its prey without difficulty. 1 



Under this head I shall mention but one fact more. A 

 friend of Grleditsch, the observer of the singular economy of 

 the burying beetle {Necrophorus vespillo) related in a former 

 letter, being desirous of drying a dead toad, fixed it to the 

 top of a piece of wood which he stuck into the ground. But, 

 a short time afterwards, he found that a body of these inde- 

 fatigable little sextons had circumvented him in spite of his 

 precautions. Not being able to reach the toad, they had un- 

 dermined the base of the stick until it fell, and then buried 

 both stick and toad. 2 



In the second place, insects gain knowledge from experience, 

 which would be impossible if they were not gifted with some 

 portion of reason. In proof of their thus profiting, I shall 

 select from the numerous facts that might be brought for- 

 ward four only, one of which has been already slightly ad- 

 verted to. 



M. P. Huber, in his valuable paper in the sixth volume of 

 the Linncsan Transactions*, states that he has seen large 

 humble-bees, when unable from the size of their head and 

 thorax to reach to the bottom of the long tubes of the flowers 

 of beans, go directly to the calyx, pierce it as well as the 

 tube with the exterior horny parts of their proboscis, and then 

 insert their proboscis itself into the orifice and abstract the 

 honey. They thus flew from flower to flower, piercing the 

 tubes from without, and sucking the nectar ; while smaller 

 humble-bees, or those with a longer proboscis, entered in at 

 the top of the corolla. Now, from this statement, it seems 

 evident that the larger bees did not pierce the bottoms of the 

 flowers until they had ascertained by trial that they could 

 not reach the nectar from the top ; but that having once as- 

 certained by experience that the flowers of beans are too 



1 Reaum. vi. 283. 



2 Gleditsch, Physic. Bot. (Econ. Abhandl. iii. 220. 3 P. 222. 



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