62 THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF INSTINCT. 



lower branches of a stunted fir, established a questionable point, namely, 

 the natural progressiveness of instinct. The docility, or the capability of 

 instruction, of many animals, admits of no doubt; but the advancement 

 of their powers, by the deductions of experience, and the spontaneous acquire- 

 ments which destroy the uniformity of instinct, extend the bounds of their 

 irrational faculties beyond the sphere which is usually assigned them. 



Some twenty years since, I remember to have seen in a quarto manuscript 

 volume of my late father's, a rough sketch which he had made of a row of 

 young Owls, each successively decreasing in size in regular gradation; with a story 

 of singular interest regarding a nest of Owls in a neighbour's barn, which I 

 understood he had seen. I have consequently searched over a large mass of 

 manuscripts on Zoological subjects in vain. My investigation, however, has not 

 been wholly without avail; for by it I have met with the original letter, 

 addressed to him, nearly twenty years since, by a person whom I have known 

 from his youth upwards. He is an intelligent auctioneer of this neighbour- 

 hood, and then resided within half a mile of my residence. Those who were 

 then his father's servants can probably attest its truth. It is dated 10th. 

 August, 1833. 



"The careless nest of the White Owl is generally built on the side wall 

 of a barn, where it commonly lays three eggs, of which more than two are 

 seldom hatched, the remaining egg being addled. It may not be extensively 

 known that the eggs of the barn-door pullet are occasionally hatched under 

 Owls, the legitimate produce being removed for the purpose. Twice have I 

 known the experiment tried, and three of each set of eggs hatched. Of the 

 six chickens four were reared; and as wonderfully illustrative of the provident 

 habits of the bird, before the progeny was hatched, the expectant parents were 

 unusually active in catching rats and mice, as provender for their future family. 

 Immediately afterwards the same Owl laid ten eggs; an aifair that progressed 

 in the following manner: — When she had laid one egg she began to sit, and 

 thus she continued laying an egg daily for the first seven days, all which 

 were hatched at the respective expirations of the incubant period. The 

 eighth egg was addled, and the ninth and tenth were hatched as before, each 

 in daily succession. The tenth bird was weak and died." I send you the 

 writer's name and address with my own. 



Such a systematic precaution to protect its natural brood from threatened 

 extinction, appears to spring from a region of thought far beyond the commonly 

 prescribed limits of instinct. It was not only a rational contemplation and 

 dread of its possibility, with a calculating effort to obviate it; but a mysterious 

 combination of the animal and intellectual faculties usui-ped the simple impulse 

 to ordinary action. The end was instinctive, but there was a cogitative and 

 complicated efibrt to attain it. 



J. C. 



Black Hall, Devon. 



