INTERNAL ANATOMY OF INSECTS. 31 
he had constructed his celebrated female automaton, 
imagined that he had irrefragably proved his principle, 
that brutes are mere machines. But if, instead of losing 
himself in the wilds of metaphysical speculation, he had 
soberly attended to facts, he would have seen that the 
instinct of animals can be modified and counteracted by 
their intellect, and consequently cannot be regarded as 
simply mechanical. Though the instinctive impulse of 
an empty stomach powerfully impel a dog to gratify his 
appetite, yet, if he be well tutored, the fear of correction 
will make him abstain from the most tempting dainties: 
and in like manner a bee will quit the nectary of a flower, 
however amply replenished with sweets, if alarmed by 
any interruption. The ants on which Buonaparte amused 
himself with experiments at St. Helena, though they 
stormed his sugar-basin when defended by a fosse of 
water, controlled their instinct and desisted when it was 
surrounded with vinegar a : and in the remarkable in- 
stance communicated to Dr. Leach by Sir Joseph Banks, 
the instinct of a crippled spider so completely changed, 
that from a sedentary web-weaver it became a hunter b . 
There is evidently, therefore, no analogy between actions 
strictly mechanical and instincts, which, though they may 
often seem to be excited by mechanical causes, are liable 
to be restrained or modified by the connexion of the in- 
stinctive and intellectual faculties c ; and while we are 
ignorant how this connexion takes place, it is obviously 
impossible to reason logically on the subject. 
In thus denying that any existing mechanical theory of 
instinct is satisfactory, I by no means intend to assert 
Antommarchi's Last Days of Napoleon. 
b Linn. Trans, xi. 393. c Vol. II. p. 509. 
