Dr. Fleming's views considered. 159 



cumstances, as we frequently observe it to be, has no relation of 

 affinity to human intelligence. 



Dr. Fleming, when treating of ' Instinctive Desires,' describes 

 the economy of the Pkryganece or Caddis-worms, which pass 

 the first portion of their existence in the water, and clothe 

 themselves with bits of straw, sand, or shells, which they cut into 

 shape, and form into a tube a little larger than the body, in which 

 they dwell, and which they likewise carry about with them. 

 The parallelism between this case and that of the Corvus Comix 

 will immediately be seen. " These animals," continues Dr. 

 Fleming, " do not, in obedience to this instinct, employ the 

 materials within their reach indiscriminately; for the covering 

 might, in that case, become too heavy to be easily carried about 

 with them at the bottom of the pool, — or too light, and, by rising 

 buoyant to the surface, remove them from their sources of nourish- 

 ment. They select and arrange the materials, so as to avoid 

 both these evils." Judging from appearances merely, this case 

 is surely a more illustrious one than that of the Corvus Comix, 

 which, as we have seen, is instanced by Dr. Fleming, when 

 treating of the Intellectual Powers, to prove that the know- 

 ledge of power, and of cause and effect, is an attribute of the ani- 

 mal mind ; for upon the author's own principles we may prove 

 that similar knowledge is no less attributable to the philosophic 

 Phryganece, who might with equal propriety have afforded an 

 illustration of Intellectual Powers, instead of being confined to 

 the humbler region of Instinct, in the author's arrangement. 



It is true that Dr. Fleming, in some degree, qualifies the as- 

 sumption that attributes of this kind belong to animals, by his 

 mode of expressing it, when he says, " That the lower animals 

 possess some notion of power and of cause and effect, may be 

 inferred from various actions which they perform." But if those 

 actions be at all the results of an intelligence similar in kind to 

 that of man, they prove something more on the part of animals, 

 than is expressed by the term " some notion of power, Sfc.j" 

 which indeed is clearly to be inferred from the philosophical de- 

 finition of the gradual development and formation of the attri- 

 butes in question, which immediately precedes this Naturalist's 



