270 NATURE AND MAN. 



still under discussion — no one, I believe, who has really studied 

 the subject, would hesitate in endorsing the sagacious remark ot 

 Macleay, that just as intelligence (or the intefitional adaption 

 of means to ends) is the essential characteristic of vertebrate 

 animals, culminating (of course) in man, so instinct (or the 

 working-out of results by an automatic mechanism) is the essential 

 characteristic of the articulate series, culminating in insects. 

 And it is a curious confirmation of this view, that of all vertebrate 

 animals, those which most strongly display instinctive pro- 

 pensities — modified, however, by intelligence — are birds, which 

 have been appropriately termed " the insects of the vertebrated 

 series." 



The nature of Automatism, and the share it takes in the ordi- 

 nary life of insects, etc., may be recognized in the following 

 examples : — 



If the head of a Centipede be cut off whilst it is in motion, 

 the body will continue to move onwards by the action of its legs; 

 and if the body be divided into several pieces, the same will take 

 place in the separate parts. After these movements have come 

 to an end, they may be excited again by irritating any part of 

 the nerve-centres or the cut extremity of the nervous cord. If 

 the body be opposed in its progress by an obstacle over which 

 the propulsive action of its legs can carry it, it mounts over it 

 and moves directly onwards ; but if the obstacle be too high to 

 be thus surmounted, the cut extremity remains forced up against 

 it, the legs still continuing to move. The only difference, there- 

 fore, between the crawling of the headless and that of the 

 complete Centipede, consists in the direction given to the move- 

 ments of the latter by the visual sense ; the sight of an obstacle 

 causing it to turn out of the way before reaching it. 



There is an insect termed the Mantis, allied to the crickets 

 and grasshoppers, whose conformation fits it to lie in wait for its 

 prey, rather than to go in search of it. Resting on its two 

 hinder pairs of legs, it lifts up the front of its body, which is 

 furnished with a pair of large and strong legs ending in sharp 

 claws, in readiness to capture any unlucky insect that may come 



more indicative of their possession of intelligential power, than anything that 

 had been ascertained by the elaborate observations of Huber. 



