ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR 205 



organism as a whole and in requiring (with few exceptions) 

 an intact nervous system. It differs also in sometimes hav- 

 ing some measure of plasticity or of variability, which is 

 quite unknown in reflex actions. It differs also inasmuch 

 as it does not always consist of acts soon over and done 

 with and attaining a result useful in itself; it is often a 

 unified many-linked concatenation of acts, working towards 

 a distant result. In many of the chains of instinctive be- 

 haviour connected with parenthood, the end is very remote, 

 sometimes never experienced; and making a dark burrow 

 in a bank can hardly be its own reward. To describe in- 

 stinctive behaviour as nothing more than a series of intri- 

 cately dovetailed reflex actions suggests a false simplicity — 

 slurring over the characteristic unification or concatenation. 

 Considered physiologically, instinctive behaviour is based 

 on neuro-muscular prearrangements, but to many naturalists 

 it seems impossible to do descriptive justice to what takes 

 place without supposing that the behaviour is suffused with 

 awareness and sustained by endeavour. 



According to Prof. W. McDougall, the higher or more 

 complex instinctive activities are much more than compound 

 reflexes. They are induced not by simple sense-impressions 

 as reflexes are, but by complex groups of sense-stimuli, such 

 as some scene. Thus insects visiting flowers show ^' a total 

 complex reaction to a total complex sense-impression ". 

 There is meaning or significance in it ; and a sustaining cona- 

 tion or endeavour. 



Prof. Lloyd Morgan holds an interesting view which 

 seems more applicable to the ^ big brain ' than to the ' little 

 brain ' type. Instinctive behaviour he regards as physiologi- 

 cally akin to reflex action; it consists of concatenated reac- 

 tions of the whole organism. The capacity for this in birds 



