[W] Darwin.
Since the Doctor wrote this passage, much light has been thrown upon those very subjects on which he laments our defective knowledge: but whilst it strengthens what I have said as to the possession of reason by insects, it confirms my observations respecting their instinctive powers.
There are facts recorded, in Huber’s researches respecting ants, which exhibit in some at least of those insects, (the Amazons,) a power of acquiring habits and characters which cannot well be regarded as merely instinctive. The Amazons take advantage of an improvement in their condition, and avail themselves of that strength, which sometimes accrues to them, in consequence of a large accession to their numbers. To relieve themselves from labour, they enslave, by a coup de main, a feeble colony of ants of another species, and transporting it to their own domicile, impose upon the captives the task of collecting provision, rearing the young, repairing the formicary, &c. &c. The Amazons become a complete aristocracy, and like ladies and gentlemen, have servants to wait upon them.
I shall not attempt to determine the point where intellect begins to dawn, nor to assign the boundary where instinct assumes the characteristics of reason. For it is no where more difficult to discriminate between the regular operation of implanted motives, and the result of acquired knowledge and habits, than in studying the phænomena presented by the bee. For the present therefore I must be allowed to regard the provinces of reason and instinct as undefinable; indeed it seems highly probable that our limited faculties may never enable us to acquire a knowledge of them. Still the facts which I have related, and those which I shall proceed to detail, afford such apparently strong evidences of a reasoning faculty, that without introducing that faculty as their source, I shall be at a loss to explain the phænomena. Dr. Darwin in his Zoonomia, relates an anecdote of apparent ratiocination in a wasp, which had caught a fly nearly as large as itself. Kneeling down, the Doctor saw the wasp dissever the head and tail from the trunk of the fly, and attempt to soar with the latter: but finding when about two feet from the ground that the wings of the fly carried too much sail, and caused its prize and itself to be whirled about, by a little breeze that had arisen, it dropped upon the ground with its prey, and deliberately sawed off with its mandibles, first one wing and then the other: having thus removed these impediments to its progress, the wasp flew away with its booty, and experienced no further molestation from the wind.
Some of the proceedings of bees in glass hives cannot be referred to their instinctive faculties,—glass being a substance which would never be presented to them in their natural state. “Having frequently observed,” says Dr. Evans, “on the inside of my glass hives, prior to the formation of cells, a number of gluey spots ranged at regular distances, I supposed them at first to be intended as a kind of land-marks, pointing out the divisions of the future streets, &c. On re-examination, however, I found them evidently used as so many footstools on the slippery glass, each bee resting on one of these with its middle pair of legs, while the fore-claws were hooked with the hind ones of the next above; thus forming a living ladder, by which the workers were enabled to reach the top, and pursue their favourite plan of commencing their combs there.”
A very striking illustration of the reasoning power of bees occurred to my friend Mr. Walond. Inspecting his bee-boxes at the end of October 1817, he perceived that a centre comb, burthened with honey, had separated from its attachments, and was leaning against another comb, so as to prevent the passage of the bees between them. This accident excited great activity in the colony, but its nature could not be ascertained at the time. At the end of a week, the weather being cold and the bees clustered together, Mr. W. observed, through the window of the box, that they had constructed two horizontal pillars betwixt the combs alluded to, and had removed so much of the honey and wax from the top of each, as to allow the passage of a bee: in about ten days more there was an uninterrupted thoroughfare; the detached comb at its upper part had been secured by a strong barrier and fastened to the window with the spare wax. This being accomplished, the bees removed the horizontal pillars first constructed, as being of no further use. “During this laborious process,” says Mr. W. "the glass window in the box was as warm as I had felt it during any part of the summer, and the bees were as active within the box.”
M. P. Huber of Lausanne, in his Observations on Humble-bees, published in the sixth volume of the Linnæan Transactions, has given a curious detail of some experiments in which the bees conducted themselves somewhat similarly to those of Mr. Walond. Having inclosed twelve humble-bees in a bell-glass, upon a table, he gave them a part of their cones or chrysalids, containing about ten silken cocoons, and freeing the latter as much as possible from wax, he fed the bees for some days with pollen only. The cells containing the cones being very unequal, the mass was so unsteady as extremely to disquiet the bees. Their affection for their young led them to mount upon the cocoons, to impart warmth to the inclosed larvæ: they could not do this without causing the comb to totter or lean on one side, and having no wax for fastening the work to the table, they had recourse to the following ingenious expedient. Two or three bees got upon the comb, and descending to the lower edge of it, with their heads downwards, hung from it by the hooks of their hind feet, and clung to the table by those of the second pair, which are very long; thus did they keep this piece of cell-work steady by their own muscular strength. When fatigued by this constrained and irksome position, they were relieved by their comrades; even the queen assisted. Having kept the bees in this state till nearly the end of the third day, and shown them to several persons, Huber introduced some honey, to enable them to form wax: they soon constructed pillars, extending from the most projecting parts of the cell-work to the table, and kept the cell-work in a firm position. The wax, however, getting gradually dry, the pillars gave way; when the poor insects adopted their former straining expedient for steadying the comb, and continued, perseveringly, to sustain it in this manner, till Huber took pity on them and glued the cake of comb firmly to the table. Could the most intelligent architect have more judiciously propped a tottering edifice, till adequate supports could be applied?
The resources of bees, when attacked by the Sphinx Atropos or Death’s-head Hawk-moth are much in point. In this case, according to Huber, they construct small archways and various other ingenious barricadoes, with a mixture of wax and propolis, so as just to allow the egress and ingress of one or two workers, and effectually to exclude their marauding enemy. The bees do not, as if guided by mere instinct, commence their fortifications on the first attack of the Sphinx, nor until they have been robbed of nearly their whole stock of honey. This therefore seems to be a case in which reason is taught by experience, and which admits in all its particulars of a direct comparison with human reason and human contrivance. Moreover, on the cessation of danger, and when honey-flowers were abundant, the colony prosperous and swarms prepared to issue, these sagacious engineers demolished the fortifications, in order to give room for the exit and entrance of the bees. A colony that had been thus attacked in 1804, and was tardy in its defensive preparations, having derived instruction from the past, constructed fresh ramparts speedily, on the reappearance of the Sphinx in 1807, and thus guarded itself from impending danger.
From what has been said in [page 296], it seems probable that the lives of the working bees do not extend beyond a year, at the utmost: if therefore my inference be legitimate, the information of the colony of 1807 must have been traditional, or else derived from a queen which had reigned over them from 1804. On the subject of traditional information, see Memory of Bees. It is further remarkable, as a confirmation of this process of ratiocination and reflection, that if the apiarian apply proper guards before the entrances to the hives, when the Sphinx makes its appearance, the bees, finding that they are anticipated, devise no measures of security.