ANIMAL INSTINCTS. 405 



a kind not palpable to sight ; and as the decline of life, with the 

 failure of its active energies, affords greater leisure, and should 

 excite increased desire to look within ourselves, so the decline 

 of the year gives time, arid naturally leads us to inquire into the 

 nature of those inward springs by which are set in motion all 

 the outward activities which have formed, hitherto, the chief 

 objects of our notice. 



By the animating principle of the insect world, we do not, 

 of course, mean that of mere vitality, common alike to animal 

 and plant, but that endowment of perceptive and apparently 

 judging mind which directs the former in its various operations. 

 Instinct shall we call it? Reason? or a combination of 

 both? 



Perhaps the best definition of insect and other animal in- 

 stincts is that given by Kirby, who considers them as " un- 

 known faculties, implanted in their constitution by their 

 Creator, by which, independent of instruction, observation, or 

 experience, and without a knowledge of the end in view, they are 

 impelled to the performance of certain actions tending to the 

 well-being of the individual and preservation of the species." 



Through Instinct, that endowment which is usually as perfect 

 in the insect's creeping infancy as in its soaring adolescence, all 

 caterpillars are directed to find, or more properly to appro- 

 priate, the food instinctively provided by the mother's instinct, 

 while some, even before that provision is attacked or cared for, 

 are bidden by the same imperative power to shape and clothe 

 themselves with garments made generally out of the same 

 material as that to be employed for food. Of this we have seen 

 examples in the clothes-moth in its state of infancy, with others 

 of the same tribe (Tineidce) which make to themselves cases, 

 or moveable tents (whence they are called tent-makers), out of 

 leaves, bark, and other substances. 



The weaving, most ingeniously, of variously-formed cocoons, 

 more or less solid, according usually to the period of their 

 occupation, the suspending themselves no less cleverly, and in 



