260 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



poselessness of her performance. Fabre gives many examples 

 of this futile persistence in instinctive operations, despite their 

 complete frustration. Alluding to the outcome of his experi- 

 ments on the Mason-wasp Pelcypaeus, he says: "The Mason- 

 bees, the Caterpillar of the Great Peacock Moth, and many 

 others, when subjected to similar tests, are guilty of the same 

 illogical behaviour: they continue, in the normal order, their 

 series of industrious actions, though accident has now rendered 

 them all useless. Just like millstones unable to cease revolving 

 though there be no corn left to grind, let them once be given 

 the compelling power and they will continue to perform their 

 task despite its futility." ("Bramble Bees," pp. 192, 193.) 



The instance cited by Dr. H. D. Schmidt is an excellent 

 illustration of this inability of an animal to appreciate either 

 the utility or futility of its instinctive behavior. Having 

 described the instinct of squirrels to bury nuts by ramming 

 them into the ground with their teeth, and then using their 

 paws to cover them with earth, he continues as follows: "Now, 

 as regards the young squirrel, which, of course, never had been 

 present at the burial of a nut, I observed that, after having 

 eaten a number of hickory nuts to appease its appetite, it 

 would take one between its teeth, then sit upright and listen 

 in all directions. Finding all right, it would scratch upon the 

 smooth blanket on which I was playing with it as if to make 

 a hole, then hammer with the nut between its teeth upon the 

 blanket, and finally perform all the motions required to fill 

 up a hole — in the air; after which it would jump away, leaving 

 the nut, of course, uncovered." {Transactions of the Am. Neu- 

 rological Ass'n, 1875, vol. I, p. 129 — italics his.) This whole 

 pantomime of purposeless gesticulations, from the useless 

 "Stop, look and listen!" down to the final desertion of the 

 uncovered nut, is overwhelming evidence of the fact that the 

 brute is destitute of any rational faculty capable of recog- 

 nizing the telic aspect of its own instinctive conduct. 



The claim is sometimes made that certain forms of animal 

 behavior are not unconsciously, but consciously, telic. Bouvier, 



