354 Transactions. — Zoology. 



selection it lias been objected that it means firing innumerable 

 shots to kill one bird. Nature, indeed, it truly seems, tries 

 innumerable variations before the one useful variation is hit on 

 and survives. We ourselves have all done the same. We 

 may thus catch, behind the apparently fortuitous processes of 

 nature, a glimpse of the operations of a mind analogous to 

 oiu' own. 



Art. XXVIII. — Instances of Instinct in Bisects. 

 By G. V. Hudson, F.B.S. 



[Head before the Wellington Plulosopliical Society, 9th September, 1891.'] 



The following remarks are offered as a supplement to Mr. 

 Carlile's extremely interesting paper on " Animal Intelli- 

 gence," which I had the pleasure of hearing at one of our 

 recent meetings. Two of the observations on instinctive 

 habits are taken from recent numbers of the Entomologist'' s 

 Monthly Magazine, while the other two are original. 



In September, 1886, Mr. C. G.. Barrett, F.E.S., recorded 

 the following observation on the habits of a little black moth 

 called PJiycis carbonariclla : — 



" One of the most singular preferences known among 

 small moths is that of Pliycis carbonariclla for burnt places 

 on heaths. A fire, lighted by accident or for mischief, or 

 sometimes to allow of the growth of young herbage, sweeps 

 across a heath, destroying everything (plants and insects) for 

 hundreds of yards, and leaves a dreary waste of burnt debris 

 and charred sticks ; and when the next autumn arrives Pliycis 

 carbonariella deserts the living heather, on which it surely 

 must have fed, and resorts in numbers to this burnt ground. 

 I have certainly seen a hundred specimens on such a piece 

 of ground in less than an hour, when the whole number dis- 

 turbed from among living heather in an afternoon would not 

 exceed four or five, and this on occasions when they fiew 

 quite freely, towering in the wildest manner. The resem- 

 blance of the moth to the charred sticks is wonderfully close, 

 and its sagacity in choosing such a resting-place ^vould be 

 equally surprising if it could only be satisfied to sit still, and 

 not hurry away at the smallest alarm. 



" The only satisfactory explanation appears to be that the 

 creature has an acute sense of the fitness of things, and, feel- 

 ing that its black coat harmonizes but ill with anything that 

 is living or growing, it congregates where the fire has reduced 

 everything to the same carboniferous condition. This seems 



