INTERNAL ANATOMY OF INSECTS. 31 



he had constructed his celebrated female automaton, 

 imagined that he had irrefragably proved his principle, 

 that brutes are mere machines. But if, instead of losing 

 himself in the wilds of metaphysical speculation, he had 

 soberly attended to facts, he would have seen that the 

 instinct of animals can be modified and counteracted by 

 their intellect, and consequently cannot be regarded as 

 simply mechanical. Though the instinctive impulse of 

 an empty stomach powerfully impel a dog to gratify his 

 appetite, yet, if he be well tutored, the fear of correction 

 will make him abstain from the most tempting dainties : 

 and in like manner a bee will quit the nectary of a flower, 

 however amply replenished with sweets, if alarmed by 

 any interruption. The ants on which Buonaparte amused 

 himself with experiments at St. Helena, though they 

 stormed his sugar-basin when defended by a fosse of 

 water, controlled their instinct and desisted when it was 

 surrounded with vinegar a : and in the remarkable in- 

 stance communicated to Dr. Leach by Sir Joseph Banks, 

 the instinct of a crippled spider so completely changed, 

 that from a sedentary web-weaver it became a hunter b . 

 There is evidently, therefore, no analogy between actions 

 strictly mechanical and instincts, which, though they may 

 often seem to be excited by mechanical causes, are liable 

 to be restrained or modified by the connexion of the in- 

 stinctive and intellectual faculties c ; and while we are 

 ignorant how this connexion takes place, it is obviously 

 impossible to reason logically on the subject. 



In thus denying that any existing mechanical theory of 

 instinct is satisfactory, I by no means intend to assert 



Antommarchi's Last Days of Napoleon. 

 h Linn. Trans, xi. 393. c VOL. II. p. 509. 



