106 Dr. Buchanan on the wound of the Ferret. 



To those who love to speculate on the mental endowments of brutes, 

 it many not be uninteresting to know, how two young Ferrets that had 

 nover before seen a rat killed, deported themselves on the occasion. 

 Before putting the old Ferret into the barrel where the rats were, a trial 

 was made with two young ones, her offspring. The untutored creatures, 

 instead of having for their single object, to put themselves into the proper 

 position to inflict the death-wound, engaged in conflict with the rats, 

 returning bite for bite ; and, although one of the rats had its leg bitten 

 through, they at length beat off their assailants. Still farther, after the 

 old Ferret had despatched the first rat, one of the young ones immediately 

 threw itself upon the dead body, assuming the very position and motions 

 which the old one had assumed, and so far as could be judged from there 

 being but one wound, thrusting its tusk into the very same aperture. 

 Did then the young Ferret receive a lesson from the old one ? The facts 

 do not at all accord with this hypothesis, for the young one, instead of 

 attending to the lesson given it, was all the while engaged in skirmishing 

 with the other rat. Besides ; the headlong fury with which the young 

 animal threw itself upon the dead body had nothing in it of the caution 

 of an experimental and intellectual act, but partook altogether of the 

 character of a blind impulse — an intense feeling of bodily gratification, 

 impelling the creature to the act which it performed. 



The acts which we name instinctive, appear to me to be best explained 

 upon the hypothesis, that they proceed from the promptings of bodily 

 organization. The bodily organs of animals are formed in a certain way 

 to adapt them to the performance of certain acts, which acts the animals 

 perform readily, and with pleasure to themselves : other acts to which 

 their organs are not adapted, they cannot perform at all, or not without 

 a painful constraint, and therefore they do not perform such acts. One 

 animal goes to sleep stretched upon the ground, finding that to be the 

 position in which there is the most complete repose of the muscular 

 system ; another supports itself on one leg, upon a spar, a position which 

 the former animal could not maintain, without the most painful efforts, 

 for more than a few seconds. That position, however, is admirably 

 adapted to the organization of birds, their bodies maintaining their 

 equilibrium in perfect security, and without muscular exertion, by a 

 mechanism which Borelli has explained. According to the same law of 

 the adaptation of organs birds fly, fish swim, quadrupeds walk and run, 

 and every animal uses its weapons, offensive and defensive, in the way in 

 which the Author of nature meant them to be used. This physiological 

 theory of Instinct seems to me more probable than that which refers it to 

 innate ideas, or any other peculiarity of mental constitution ; or than the 

 extraordinary hypothesis of Lord Brougham,* who refers all instinctive 

 acts to the immediate inspiration of the Deity — the divine mind sup- 

 plying the place of reason, and directing the bodily organs. This is 



* Dissertations on Subjects connected with Natural Theology. 



