INSTINCT AND REASON. 73 



one occasion, as he was walking in the yard of his 

 friend's country-house, he 'was wonderfully pleased to 

 see the different workings of instinct in a hen followed 

 by a brood of ducks. The young, upon the sight of 

 a pond, immediately ran into it ; while the step-mother, 

 with all imaginable anxiety, hovered about the borders 

 of it, to call them out of an element that appeared to 

 her so dangerous and destructive 1 .' In order to test the 

 real force of nature in this matter, as distinct from ex- 

 perience and education, I ventured on the experiment of 

 placing some little orphan ducklings, which had been 

 reared away from any pond, in a shallow bath of water 

 just deep enough for them to swim in. The experiment 

 was two or three times repeated, but in each case with 

 a sort of impiety, or, at any rate, gross disrespect to- 

 wards the grand principle of instinct, the ducklings, 

 instead of enjoying themselves in their appropriate 

 element, made the most violent and unceasing efforts 

 to escape from it. The whole theory of instinct, indeed, 

 probably rests on a multitude of evidences which have 

 themselves been taken for granted. At every point 

 minute observation, or actual questioning of the facts 

 asserted, undermines it. Addison himself must have 

 begun to waver, before he inserted in the numbers of 

 the ' Guardian 2 ' the French philosopher's account of the 

 ant, and its wonderful ingenuity and perseverance. 

 Nor are passages wanting in his works, which might 

 have been expressly written in support of the theory 

 of development. After commenting on the various 



1 ' Spectator,' No. xai. 2 Nos. 156, 157. 



