Nervous System and Senses, 525 



are " capable of deriving some knowledge from experience ; " 

 nor will the following anecdote of the spout-fish (>S51en 

 siliqua, J^g, 104.), told for a similar purpose, strengthen the 

 argument. " It is remarkable," says Mr. Smellie, " that 

 the spout-fish, though it lives in salt water, abhors salt. 

 When a little salt is thrown into the hole, the animal instantly 

 quits his habitation. But it is still more remarkable, that, if 

 you seize the animal with your hand, and afterwards allow it to 

 retire into its cell, you may strew as much salt upon it as you 

 please, but the fish will never again make its appearance. If 

 you do not handle the animal, by applying salt you may 

 make it come to the surface as often as you incline ; and 

 fishermen often make use of this stratagem. This behaviour 

 indicates more sentiment and recollection than one should 

 naturally expect from a spout-fish." * I think that it indicates 

 neither ; for nothing more can be safely inferred from it than 

 that the creature has experienced, from the rough handling, 

 a disagreeable sensation, which continues to operate for its 

 safety for a time ; and analogous facts meet us every where 

 Do you irritate a snail for a few successive times, and, though 

 apparently intent on a journey of importance, it will with- 

 draw within its house, and your patience shall be exhausted 

 before it will reissue; or make an unsuccessful attempt to 

 detach a limpet from its rock, and it will not forego its firm 

 105 hold until, perhaps, the flowing tide has again covered it. 



# Facts like these do not indicate intelligence. Neither is it 

 from any consciousness of the existence of enemies that a 

 little land snail (Bulimus obscurusjj'^. 105.) covers itself 

 with a coating adapted to the different situations in which it is 

 found, so as to be detected with difficulty. " If its abode," ac- 

 cording to Mr. Sheppard, " be upon the trunk of a tree covered 

 with lichens, then is the epidermis so constructed as to cause 

 the shell to resemble a little knot on the bark, covered with 

 such substances. If on a smooth tree, from whose bark issue 

 small sessile buds, as is frequently the case, it will pass off 

 very well for one of them ; and on a dry bank, or the lower 

 part of the body of a tree splashed with mud, its appearance 

 will be that of a little misshapen pointed piece of dirt."f This 

 is an interesting passage in the history of the animal, not 

 probatory of any superior " sagacity and intelligence" cer- 

 tainly, but illustrative of the care of its beneficent Creator, 

 who has bestowed upon it the instinct to do this for a purpose 

 of which it is itself wholly ignorant : " things reasonless thus 

 warned by nature be." It is the same unerring and unvarying 



* Phil, of Nat. Hist., i. 139. f Lin. Trans., xiv. 166. 



