Provision for the Young. 95 



him. Without this instrument he would be power- 

 less ; with it he would be just as powerless without 

 the instinct to use it as he does. But the instru- 

 ment and the instinct combined constitute an im- 

 portant adaptation of the animal to the world. 

 They are evidently as much the parts of the same 

 plan as are the different organs by which the vital 

 processes are carried on. 



It is only when we come to those animals where 

 provision for their young calls instinct into play, that 

 it becomes most marked ; though in many cases we 

 are compelled to believe that the acts of the parent 

 in providing for its young are no more understood 

 by that parent as having relation to its young, than 

 the tree consciously provides for its flower when it 

 folds it in the bud. Certain acts were needed to 

 carry out fully what organs and functions commenced 

 but could not complete. A blind impulse is upon 

 the animal to perform those needed acts. And that 

 impulse we call instinct ; an impulse of a voluntary 

 agent indeed, but an impulse so strong that it 

 becomes like a wheel in machinery, which is so im- 

 portant that it makes the machine what it is, and 

 without it all would fail. There is, on the part of 

 the animal, will to do the act ; but, so far as we can 

 see, no desire to refrain from doing, and oftentimes 

 no more knowledge why the thing is done, than 

 there is in the flower when it bends itself towards the 

 light. What knows the cicada, the so-called seven- 

 teen-year locust, that has burrowed as a grub in the 

 earth for half a human generation, when it comes 



