30 Instinct and Reason. [Jan., 



river, and so cut off his communications for retreat, when Reynard 

 all of a sudden fell prostrate upon the ground as one dead, his 

 eyes being shut, his limbs relaxed and his breathing arrested, and 

 so suffeied himself to be shouldered and carried iiome. Conceiv- 

 ino- however a decided aversion against being skinned, he watched 

 his chance as soon as his captor with half-averted eye had laid 

 him down, and began to open his eyes cautiously, and raise his 

 head, preparatory to making his tracks for the woods, when a ball 

 laid him flat effectually. Could Falstaff have played the death- 

 scene better? A dog, an acquaintance of mine, used to be shut in 

 the rear yard, but being partial to the society of the kitchen, he 

 would contrive to get back again thus. Waiting a space to lull 

 suspicion, he would advance quietly to the door, and elevating his 

 paw to the height of a man's elbow, gave a rap in exact counter- 

 feit of the person preceding him, which if detained he would re- 

 new at intervals, so that I was taken in by him (or rather he was 

 taken in by me,) more times than one. A signal case in point is 

 given by a British officer in the east, the author of Twelve Years' 

 Military Adventures. As a battering train on its way to the siege 

 of Seringapatam was passing along the quicksand bed of a river, 

 a man fell forward from the tumbrel of one of the guns, so that 

 he must have been crushed but for the elephant behind, who in- 

 stantly and of himself lifted the wheel with his trunk, and kept 

 it suspended till the man was cleared. 



Brute reason may ever predominate over instinct, as in the dog 

 told of by Sergeant Wildie. This dog being addicted to prow- 

 lings after sleep, was afterwards tied up by night, but he would 

 contrive to slip his collar and renew his depredations, taking the 

 precaution however to return ere day break and readjust things 

 as before. 



Allied to both instinct and reason is an intermediate class of 

 impulses, the appetites and the passions, or in phrenological phra- 

 seology the affective faculties and the sentiments. While instinct 

 looks to the means, and reason to the end thiough the means, these 

 when uninfluenced by the supervisory control of reason, regard 

 the end directly, and irrespectively of the means. Anger is evinced 

 in the horse, as he turns upon his master for cheating him with 

 bridle in hand and an empty corn basket. For the lordly port of 

 the turkey, ostentatious strut of the peacock, the swagger of the 

 bull at the (hiving from the Held his competitors. 'J'lie elephant 

 if sometimes implicable in his resentment of vexatious deceptions, 

 is also warm in his attachments, and compassionate towards mis- 

 fortune. Serpents even if possessed of but a fabulous power of 

 charming, may themselves be charmed, and the cobra di capello is 

 instructed by the Indian juggler to dance (in snake-fashion though 

 it be,) to the rude din of his tambourine. The elephant will 



