14 HABITS AND INSTINCTS OP ANIMALS. CHAP. I. 



duce very different purposes. The infant turns to its 

 mother's breast by instinct ; but the mechanic invents 

 a new instrument by long and deep reasoning. Both 

 these are the effects of volition, or determining motion ; 

 but how can it possibly be said that they equally 

 emanate from MIND, when the one belongs to the ani- 

 mal economy, the other to the moral ? Hence it there- 

 fore follows, that, where the effects are so different, the 

 faculties themselves must be equally different. What 

 these latter really are, it is altogether useless to inquire* 

 They belong to those " deep things " of the Creator's 

 government, which no finite understanding can reach. 



(17.) We shall now lay before the reader, as exam- 

 ples of instinct, a number of singular peculiarities of 

 animal economy, which will not properly arrange under 

 the other chapters of this volume. Many of the Acrita, 

 or the marine corals, zoophytes, &c., are immovably 

 fixed to submarine rocks and other bodies, where they 

 may be said to grow or vegetate in such a sluggish 

 manner as to preclude the idea of any degree of instinct 

 having been assigned to them ; and yet, when we re- 

 collect that these productions, with their innumerable 

 regular and beautiful cells, are actually the work of 

 minute animals, we must confess that nearly as high 

 a degree of the building instinct has been given to them 

 as to the bees and wasps, whose dwellings are scarcely 

 more regular, or fabricated in a more finished manner. 

 There is reason, also, to suppose that the animals of 

 certain corals only fix themselves on particular rocks, 

 at proper depths, and in otherwise favourable situations. 

 Now, all this requires a degree of instinct far higher 

 than would at first be imagined. We are yet, how- 

 ever, so profoundly ignorant on the animal economy of 

 these creatures, that we must leave them, for others 

 higher in the scale of creation. 



(18.) In BIRDS, we shall find this faculty exhibited 

 in many curious, and several highly interesting, par- 

 ticulars ; such as the construction of their habitations 

 the process of nidification the methods of pro- 



