ANIMAL INSTINCT. 15 



in conversation^ once defined instinct ' as a propensity 

 prior to experience ;' — a definition that aptly expresses 

 those unen'ing operations of the animal, and more 

 especially the insect tribe, by which their food is ob- 

 tained, and the safety and provision of their future 

 offspring secured, when they themselves have ceased 

 to exist, and which we again perceive to be punctual- 

 ly and circumstantially followed by their young, 

 unaided by parental precept or example. It has been 

 justly remarked that * *" the sagacity and laborious 

 industry exerted in the various instances of animal 

 architecture have one uniforai tendency. They are 

 all designed for the multiplication, protection, and 

 nomishment of offspring. But many of them are so 

 artful, and require such persevering labour, that the 

 human mind is bewildered when it attempts to rea- 

 son upon them. Some philosophers have had recourse 

 to conformation of body, and mechanical impulse, to 

 account for it. Their reasonings, however, though 

 often ingenious, involve the subject in tenfold obscu- 

 rity. We can hardly suppose that the animals actu- 

 ally foresee what is going to happen, because, at first, 

 they have not had even the aid of experience ; and, 

 particularly in some of the insect tribes, the parents 

 are dead before the young are produced. Pure in- 

 stincts of this kind, therefore, must be referred to an- 

 * Sm^ie's Philosophy of Natural History, vol. xi. page 118. 



