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.