330 On Animal Instinct: in its Relation to the Mind of Man, 



wliich does not habitually practise it, and which can neither have had 

 individual nor ancestral experience. This was the case of a Blackcap 

 (Sylvia Atricapilla) which fell to the ground as if wounded from a 

 bush, in order to distract attention from its nest. 



If now we examine, in the light of our own reason, all the elements 

 of knowledge or of intellectual perception upon which the instinct of 

 the Wild Duck is founded, and all of which, as existing somewhei'e, it 

 undoubtedly reflects, we shall soon see how various and extensive 

 these elements of knowledge are. First, there is the knowledge that 

 the cause of the alarm is a carnivorous animal. On this fundamental 

 point no creature is ever deceived. The youngest chick knows a 

 hawk, and the dreadful form fills it with instant terror. Next there is 

 knowledge that dogs and other carnivorous quadrupeds have the sense 

 of smell, as an additional element of danger to the creatures on which 

 they prey. Next, there is the knowledge that the dog, not being 

 itself a flying animal, has sense enough not to attempt the pursuit of 

 prey which can avail itself of this sure and easy method of escape. 

 Next there is the conclusion from all this knowledge, that if the dog 

 is to be induced to chase, it must be led to suppose that the power of 

 flight has been somehow lost. And then there is the farther conclu- 

 sion that this can only be done by such an accurate imitation of a 

 disabled bird as shall deceive the enemy into a belief in the possibility 

 of capture. And lastly there are all the powers of memory and the 

 qualities of imagination which enable good acting to be performed. 

 All this reasoning and all this knowledge is certainly involved in the 

 action of the bird-mother, just as certainly as reasoning and knowledge 

 of a much profounder kind is involved in the structure or adjustment 

 of the organic machinery by which and through which the action is 

 itself performed. 



There is unquestionably a sense, and a very important sense, in 

 which all these wonderful operations of instinct are " automatic." 

 The intimate knowledge of physical and of physiological laws — the 

 knowledge even of the mental qualities and dispositions of other 

 animals— and the processes of reasoning by which advantage is taken 

 of these, — this knowledge and this reasoning cannot, without manifest 

 absurdity, be attributed to the birds themselves. This is admitted at 

 least as regards the birds of the present day. But surely the absurdity 

 is quite as great if this knowledge and reasoning, or any part of it, be 

 attributed to the birds of a former generation. In the past history of 

 the species there may have been change — there may have been 

 development. But there is not the smallest reason to believe that the 

 progenitors of any bird or of any beast, however different in form, have 



