302 NATURAL HISTORY 
it would appear that they never depart three hun- 
dred yards from the village. 
LETTER LII. 
Txey who write on natural history cannot too 
frequently advert to instinct, that wonderful limited 
faculty, which in some instances raises the brute 
creation, as it were, above reason, and in others 
leaves them so far below it. Philosophers have 
defined instinct to be that secret influence by which 
every species is impelled naturally to pursue, at all 
times, the same way or track, without any teaching 
or example; whereas reason, without instruction, 
would often vary, and do that by many methods 
which instinct effects by one alone. Now this 
maxim must be taken in a qualified sense, for there 
are instances in which instinct does vary and con- 
form to the circumstances of place and convenience. 
It has been remarked that every species of bird 
has a mode of nidification peculiar to itself, so that 
a schoolboy would at once pronounce on the sort 
of nest before him. This is the case among fields, 
and woods, and wilds ; but in the villages round 
London, where mosses, and gossamer, and cotton 
from vegetables are hardly to be found, the nest of 
the chaffinch has not that elegant finished appear- 
ance, nor is it so beautifully studded with lichens, 
as ina more rural district ; and the wren is obliged 
to construct its house with straws and dry grasses, 
which do not give it that rotundity and compactness 
so remarkable in the edifices of that little architect. 
