We might, perhaps, with advantage, have spoken of the faculty of attention, i.e. the direction of the mental powers to a particular end by the determinate action of the will. At every moment we may see, in a busy hive, evidences of this power. Indeed, in so complex a community, where so many operations are constantly going forward, where so many stages of social development are being passed through, where so many separate interests have to be regarded, and where the harmonious co-operation of individuals is of supreme importance to the general welfare, it is impossible that this faculty of attention should be wanting or unexercised.
We have hinted at the prevision shown by bees. Now, if this really exists in them, we must acknowledge it to be one of the very highest endowments of intellect It is that which in man removes him from the sport of circumstances, and gives him large control over his own earthly destinies. It is that which, when applied to events more or less unascertainable by the majority of men, proportionately awakes their astonishment, and creates a reputation for ability and high endowment. Now, that the faculty is possessed by bees is, we think, evident from many considerations. When, for instance, a hive has lost its queen, and has no hope of a successor, despair comes over the community, as the workers feel they have no longer an object in their toil. They seem to foresee the speedy end of their colony, and the consequent uselessness of collecting stores, or proceeding with comb-building.
Again, the destruction of the drones and drone-brood, when no longer of possible service, implies a knowledge that the males, if spared, will produce a scarcity of food, by uselessly consuming the stores, while the preservation, to a late period, of drones in a hive whose queen is lost near the end of summer, indicates a foresight of the possible need of males to mate with a young queen, whose advent is hoped for.
Without much risk of straining this line of argument, we might consider the storage of honey and bee-bread as a prevision, and not merely as a provision for the needs of winter. In like manner, the encasing in propolis of slugs, mice, or other intruders, when dead in the hives, may be looked upon as a safeguard against expected putrefaction. The cessation from grief for loss of a queen, when new royal cells are preparing, may be regarded as evidence of anticipated joy in a coming monarch. We acknowledge, however, that here the dividing line between reason and instinct becomes very narrow, and it is exceedingly difficult to determine the strict limits of either.
At this point, also, comes in the remarkable question of heredity. The causes and determining circumstances of this quality are at present very imperfectly understood; nor is it probable that anything like a complete explanation of the subject will be forthcoming. That it is, however, a most potent element in the subject of mental, as well as physical, characters cannot be disputed. To it, in fact, the possession of what we call instinct must be entirely referred, though it leaves untouched the actual nature of this endowment.
The definition of instinct is not a very simple matter, but we may consider it as a power, appearing in generation after generation of animals, by which, without instruction, they perform certain actions, or series of actions, tending to the welfare of the individual or of the race. We usually regard the purely intellectual operations as improvable by education. Instinct, on the other hand, neither requires, nor, in general, is aided by teaching. It is true that man has taken advantage of certain qualities, apparently instinctive, in particular animals, and has seemed to improve them by schooling them, as, for instance, in the case of pointers and setters among dogs; but it is rather, as it appears to us, the mental processes of the creature, which have been controlled and modified, and then the tendency to the reproduction of these has been transmitted by heredity. Pure instinct we, therefore, continue to regard as outside the plane of education.
The faculty as exhibited by bees is most astonishing. We have already enumerated many circumstances, which evidently have had their origin in this power, but we may well recall certain of these in illustration of this point.
Firstly, then, the shaping of the cells with definite and constantly repeated angles of the sides; the arrangement of them, so that the base of each is formed by the junction of the bottoms of three cells on the opposite side of the comb; the preparation of abodes suitable in size, and in other special respects, for the larvæ of queens, drones, and workers; and the careful transition from one to the other of the last two—all these and other circumstances connected with the construction of their dwellings, attest the possession of an innate faculty needing no instruction from the elders of the hive.
Again, the gathering, in due proportion and according to varying needs, of honey, pollen, and propolis, must be attributed to this same occult endowment. The proper admixture of the different kinds of food, adapted to the varying ages of the larvæ; the preparation and administration of the "royal jelly," necessary for the development of queen-larvæ; the covering of the cells with waxen lids of different shapes, according to the nature of their contents convex on the male cells, nearly flat on those of workers, and somewhat concave on the honey stores—are other manifestations of an internal guide towards useful labour.
Once more, the series of remarkable facts connected with their respect and attention and service to their sovereign; their treatment of queens introduced into hives possessing a queen, or without one; the permission, and even urging, of rival monarchs to fight à outrance; the expedients adopted to repair, if by any means it is possible, the loss of a queen—all these facts point, still further, to a power, by whose almost unerring operation extraordinary results are secured for the well-being and the very continuance of the race.