[V] In the Annual Register for 1775 some very extraordinary instances are related of the protraction of life in snails. After they had lain in a cabinet above fifteen years, immersing them in water caused them to revive and crawl out of their shells.
Maraldi has related a somewhat similar instance. A houseless snail or slug, as it is called, had entered one of his hives: the bees, as soon as they observed it, pierced it with their stings, till it expired beneath their repeated strokes; after which, being unable to dislodge it, they covered it all over with propolis.
“For, soon in fearless ire, their wonder lost.
Spring fiercely from the comb th’ indignant host.
Lay the pierc’d monster breathless on the ground,
And clap, in joy, their victor pinions round.
While all in vain concurrent numbers strive,
To heave the slime-girt giant from the hive,—
Sure not alone by force instinctive sway’d,
But blest with reason’s soul-directing aid,
Alike in man or bee, they haste to pour,
Thick hardening as it falls, the flaky shower;
Embalm’d in shroud of glue the mummy lies,
No worms invade, no foul miasmas rise.”
Evans.
In these two cases, who can withhold his admiration of the ingenuity and judgement of the bees? In the first case, a troublesome creature gained admission into the hive, which, from its unwieldiness, they could not remove, and which, from the impenetrability of its shell, they could not destroy: here then their only resource was to deprive it of loco-motion, and to obviate putrefaction; both which objects they accomplished most skilfully and securely,—and, as is usual with these sagacious creatures, at the least possible expense of labour and materials. They applied their cement, where alone it was required, namely, round the verge of the shell. In the latter case, to obviate the evil of putrescence, by the total exclusion of air, they were obliged to be more lavish in the use of their embalming material, and to form with it so complete an incrustation or case over the “slime-girt giant,” as to guard them from the consequences which the atmosphere invariably produces upon all animal substances, that are exposed to its action after life has become extinct. May it not be asked, What means more effectual could human wisdom have devised, under similar circumstances? Indeed, many of the proceedings of bees and other associated insects seem traceable to a reasoning power; for they exhibit an adaptation of means to ends, and vary them to suit particular emergencies,—the judicious performance of actions with a view to some proposed end, is the criterion by which we judge of rationality.
On the other hand, the difficulty of ascribing some of their actions to any other principle than that which is known by the name of Instinct, has led to a classification of the whole of their proceedings under that head.
Instinct is a faculty the exercise of which implies an exquisitely fine mechanism of some of the senses. It appears to operate independently of all anticipation of consequences; the avenues to knowledge are, to be sure, less circuitous in these and other animals than in man, neither experience nor inductive reasoning seem to be at all essential to the perfection of their operations; they may be said to have, what many an indolent human being has wished to find,—a royal road to knowledge.
“If in the Insect, Reason’s twilight ray
Sheds on the darkling mind a doubtful day.
Plain is the steady light her Instincts yield.
To point the road o’er life’s unvaried field;
If few those Instincts, to the destin’d goal,
With surer course, their straiten’d currents roll.”
Evans.
One writer, and that a very ingenious one, has endeavoured to resolve all instincts into reason, and has boldly hazarded the following conjecture. "If we were better acquainted with the histories of those insects that are formed into societies,—as the bees, wasps and ants,—we should find that their arts and improvements are not so similar and uniform as they now appear to us, but that they arose in the same manner (from experience and tradition) as the arts of our own species; though their reasoning is from few ideas, is busied about fewer objects, and is exerted with less energy[W].”