10 An Inquiry respecting 



the sphere of their proper consciousness. The same argumeots 

 are applicable to those cases, in which animals appear to act more 

 immediately from the exigency of circumstances, that in these also 

 they are similarly directed ; as in the case of the ostrich, an ap- 

 parently stupid bird, which, in Senegal, where the heat is great, 

 sits only by night when the coolness of the air would chill the 

 eggs ; and in the case of parent birds, when their nestlings are 

 confined in cages, or tied to the nest ; in which exigency, the old 

 ones prolong their care, and continue to supply them with food, 

 beyond the accustomed period.* It thus appears clearly evident, 

 I think, that animals do not act with a view to consequences, from 

 their own proper consciousness; but that whenever they do so 

 act, it is from a dictating energy operating above the sphere of 

 their consciousness, and disposing them so to do : that the business 

 of mental analysis and extraction, is performed/or them, as it were, 

 in every instance in which they appear to exhibit proofs of it; and 

 that properly speaking, there is nothing of design attributable to 

 brutes in their actions, but merely a subordinaie voluntary princi- 

 ple, and discriminative perception, which may be termed natural, 

 to distinguish it from what is moral, intellectual, and scientific ; to 

 which latter principles alone design can properly be referred. If 

 the appearances of design m the animals be taken as proofs of 

 such design being proper to them, we must be forced to admit 

 that they are possessed of moral, intellectual, and scientific re- 

 flection ; but we might, upon this principle, argue the same thing 

 of the plant, which when placed in a cellar where but a partial 

 light is admitted, turns itself towards the ray ;— namely, that as 

 there is the appeurance of design in the action, we must therefore 

 attribute design to the subject in which we perceive its effects, 

 and thus elevate the vegetable to the intellectual sphere : and we 

 should actually do this, did we not stop short to consider the 

 adequacy of the apparent agent to the production of the effect as 

 we behold it performed. 



• A few years since a pair of sparrows which had built in the thatch roof of 

 a house at Poole, were observed to continue their regular visits to the nest long 

 after the time when the young birds take flight. This unusual circumstance 

 continued throughout the year ; and in the winter, a gentleman who had all 

 along observed "them, determined on investigating its cause. He therefore 

 mounted a ladder, and found one of the young ones detained a prisoner, by 

 means of a piece of string or worsted which formed part of the nest, having 

 become accidentally twisted round its leg. Being thus incapacitated for pro- 

 curing its own sustenance, it had been fed by the continued exertions of its 

 parents. B. 



