INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



421 



invariably at first long at a loss, while the former flew at 

 once to their object. 1 



My third fact is supplied by the same ants whose sagacious 

 choice of the vicinity of Reaumur's glass hives for their colony 

 has been just related to you. He tells us that of these ants, 

 of which there were such swarms on the outside of the hive, 

 not a single one was ever perceived within ; and infers that, 

 as they are such lovers of honey, and there was no difficulty 

 in finding crevices to enter in at, they were kept without, 

 solely from fear of the consequences. 2 Whence arose this 

 fear ? We have no ground for supposing ants endowed with 

 any instinctive dread of bees; and Reaumur tells us, that 

 when he happened to leave in his garden hives of which the 

 bees had died, the ants then never failed to enter them and 

 regale themselves with the honey. It seems reasonable, there- 

 fore, to attribute it to experience. Some of the ants, no doubt, 

 had tried to enter the peopled as they did the empty hive, 

 but had been punished for their presumption; and the dear- 

 bought lesson was not lost on the rest of the community. 



The fourth instance under this head which I shall mention 

 is that supplied by an Indian species of ant (Formica indefessa 

 Sykes). A colony of these voracious insects in Col. Sykes's 

 house at Poona having been circumvented in their repeated 

 and successful attacks on the sweetmeats always left on a 

 sideboard, when it was removed to a distance from the wall 

 sufficient to prevent their reaching it climbed up the wall to 

 the height of about a foot above its level, and then let them- 

 selves fall so as to alight on the table, as Colonel Sykes him- 

 self witnessed with equal surprise and admiration. 3 Here it 

 is obvious that it was only after experience had shown the 

 ants the inefficacy, in the altered position of the table, of their 

 former modes of attacking the sweetmeats, that they adopted 

 this novel and ingenious way of getting access to them, which, 

 whether we refer it to reason or a variation of instinct, is 

 equally remarkable. 



Insects, in the third place, are able mutually to commu- 



1 Entom. Mag. i. 525. 



3 Trans. Ent. Soc. Land. i. 105. 



2 Reaum. v. 709. 



