1847.J Instinct and Reason. 29 



also measurably in inverse ratio, and in antagonism to each other, 

 the former losing in predominance as the latter expands. For in- 

 stances in illustration let us look to the habits and the habitudes 

 of various animals. 



As exemplifications of pure instinct may be adduced, the selec- 

 tion by the goat of the'mountain Kalmia, what the sheep shuns 

 as a poison, the cat retracing its weary home after having been 

 transported in a blind sack, the caterpillar turning again to the 

 body of the tree from which it has been shaken, the web Aveaving 

 of the spider, the nidification of birds, the cocoonery fabrics of the 

 silk worm, as facile and complete in the first effort as in the last, 

 the bee ranging in a right line for its forest hive, the nightingale 

 whose virgin warble falls in tones rich and mellow on the ear, as 

 itself " melts away into air and liquid light." The ram receives 

 his adversary upon his horns, the horse throws up his heels, the 

 elephant flourishes his tusks, the tiger shows his claws and teeth. 

 With the '^bland zephyrs of spring return the migratory robin 

 and the blue bird to revive their amorous dalliance, now the craw- 

 fish seeks his wonted haunts, the ant hoards its stores against a 

 winter's day, and the moth deposits its eggs for the future cater- 

 pillar. 



Next for specimens of mixed instinct; instinct, that is, modified 

 and improved by experience and instruction; here shadowed forth 

 in but faint adumbrations, there illuminated with clearer glim- 

 merings. Birds accustomed to build in accessible places, when 

 disturbed, will seek out other and remoter ones. The ostrich in 

 intertropical latitudes, incubates only by night. Birds in re- 

 gions infested with monkeys attach their nests to pendant boughs. 

 The dog guides a blind man with as much circumspection as would 

 a boy. In scrutinizing a crowd moreover to hunt out a thief, 

 he evinces a very considerable complexity of reasoning. The 

 musquash when his conical domicil gets ice-bound, bores a breath- 

 ing hole through. The birds as well as the running animals of 

 the Falkland Islands that huddled around Bougainville's crew, soon 

 learned to keep at a more prudent distance. The partridge is busy 

 with ingenious artifices to decoy the fowler by feints till her young 

 have got concealed, when she too suddenly disappears. The hum- 

 ming-bird too large for the corolla it lights upon, will pierce the 

 flower from the exterior. 



The existence of the reasoning faculty is eminently verified 

 among the more intelligent of the mammalia. A fox in the Duke 

 of Beaufort's grounds, being hard pushed by the hounds, rushed 

 into a shiny pool and buried himself up to the neck, sustaining his 

 head above water by a bough between his teeth. A respectable 

 gentleman, a hunter in his day, related to me the following ad- 

 venture. He had forced a fox upon a headland at the bend of a 



