176 INSTINCTS. 



fly proceed from instruction. She had no teacher in her 

 caterpillar state. She never knew her parent. I do not 

 see, therefore, how knowledge, acquired by experience, if 

 it ever were such, could be transmitted from one genera- 

 tion to another. There is no opportunity either for instruc- 

 tion or imitation. The parent race is gone before the new 

 brood is hatched. And, if it be original reasoning in the 

 butterfly, it is profound reasoning indeed. She must re- 

 member her caterpillar state, its tastes and habits ; of which 

 memory she shows no signs whatever. She must conclude 

 from analogy, for here her recollection cannot serve her, 

 that the little round body, which drops from her abdomen, 

 will at a future period produce a living creature, not like 

 herself, but like the caterpillar, which she remembers herself 

 once to have been. Under the influence of these reflections 

 she goes about to make provision for an order of things, 

 which, she concludes, will, some time or other, take place. 

 And it is to be observed, that not a few out of many, but 

 that all butterflies argue thus, all draw this conclusion, all 

 act upon it.* 



But suppose the address, and the selection, and the plan, 

 which we perceive in the preparations which many irra- 

 tional animals make for their young, to be traced to some 

 probable origin ; still there is left to be accounted for, that 

 which is the source and foundation of these phenomena, 

 that which sets the whole at work, the a-ro^'/vi, the pa- 

 rental aff'ection, which I contend to be inexplicable upon 

 any other hypothesis than that of instinct. 



For we shall, hardly, I imagine, in brutes, refer their 

 conduct towards their off'spring to a sense of duty, or of 

 decency, a care of reputation, a compliance with publick 

 manners, with publick laws, or with rules of life built upon 

 a long experience of their utility. And all attempts to ac- 



* The dragon-fly is an inhabitant of the air, and could not exist in 

 water ; yet in this element, which is alone adapted for her young, she 

 drops her eggs. 



Not less surprising is the parental instinct of the gad-fly, (Gastero- 

 philus equi,) whose larvae are destined to be nourished in the stomach 

 and intestines of the horse ! How shall the parent convey tliem 

 there ? By a mode truly extraordinary — Flying round the animal, 

 she curiously poises her body while she deposites her eggs on the 

 hairs of his skin. Whenever, therefore, the horse chances to lick the 

 part of his body to which they are attached, they adhere to the 

 tongue, and from thence pass into the stomach and intestines. And 

 what increases our surprise is, that the fly places her eggs almost ex- 

 clusively on the knee and the shoulder, on those parts the horse is 

 8ure to hck. Faxton, 



