288 HABITS AND INSTINCTS OF ANIMALS. , CHAP. X. 



degree of intelligence which has been given to finite 

 beings. Now, as Nature, in all her groups, advances 

 to the full development of their peculiarities by slow 

 and finely graduated steps, it would follow, if man was 

 truly the type of the animal circle, that those forms 

 which made the nearest approach to him, would also 

 be the most intelligent of the brute creation ; that 

 they would show us the graduating stages between mere 

 ordinary instinct and reflective reason ; that we should 

 trace, in fact, through the families of the monkeys 

 and apes, the graduated development of those mental 

 powers which finally burst forth, in all their varied and 

 astonishing splendour, in man. This, we maintain, is 

 what the unvaried course of the system of Nature, in 

 all her other works, would lead us to conclude. Why, 

 then, should there be a solitary exception ? and why 

 should this exception, moreover, be made in that par- 

 ticular group, which, as standing at the head of the 

 whole creation, is pre-eminently typical, and, conse- 

 quently, that in which we should expect, by every 

 analogy of reasoning, the primary laws of nature would 

 be most perfectly developed ? In all other groups, those 

 which are pre-eminently typical of their respective 

 circles are also pre-eminent examples of the gradation 

 of structure, of habits, and of instinct ; they are also 

 those which Nature appears to have delighted in making 

 the strongest evidences of her general laws. Yet here, 

 in the very zoological circle in which some naturalists 

 are disposed to place man, we should find him sur- 

 rounded with beings which possess not the hundredth 

 part of the intelligence of an ant, a bee, or even a spider ! 

 The truth is, that animal intelligence, or instinct, is 

 not one of the great characters of vertebrated animals ; 

 their perfection, on the contrary, lies in the complicated 

 nature of their structure, the paucity of their numbers, 

 and the great size of the individuals. The greatest 

 perfection, on the contrary, of the annulose or insect 

 kingdom, is their intelligence ; while, in the compara- 

 tive simplicity of their structure, the excessive minute- 



