46 INSECTS. 



-wooden boxes with glass windows, in which he had introduced a 

 nest of ants, on a table in his study, and keeping them prisoners, 

 by immersing the feet of the table in buckets of water, he was en- 

 abled to make them the subject of continued observation, and vary 

 his experiments on the same individuals. Habit and the experience 

 that no evil was intended, gradually reconciled the ants to the vi- 

 sits of their inspector. By comparing the results of these observa- 

 tions and experiments with similar ones made on the same species 

 of ants in their natural state of freedom, he satisfied himself that 

 perfect reliance could be placed on their accuracy. 



The facts which have thus been brought to light are not valuable 

 merely as supplying chasms in the history of a single genus of 

 insects ; they are of importance, in as far as they point to more 

 general views of the faculties of the lower animals, and to the solu- 

 tion of some of the questions with regard to instinct, to which we 

 formerly adverted. On a superficial comparison of the actions of 

 animals with those of our own species, much apparent resemblance 

 may be traced ; but on examining them with more attention, with 

 respect to the source from which they are derived, the analogy be- 

 comes much more weak, and the difficulty of explaining the greater 

 number has been so considerable, that many philosophers have cut 

 the knot, by referring generally the actions of man to reason, and 

 those of brutes to instinct. It was pretended, that their faculties 

 differed not merely in degree but in kind ; and that, in a word, 

 there existed between them no principle in common. Observation 

 must, however, convince us, that the lower animals exert, in many 

 instances, a choice of means for accomplishing their ends ; and that 

 they are capable of a degree of combination of those means, con- 

 formable with the variation of external circumstances. It is obvi- 

 ous, that actions prompted by mere appetite, which is the direct 

 result of organization producing pain or pleasure, cannot be pro- 

 perly termed instinctive, at least, in the sense in which instinct is 

 opposed to reason. Still less can it be said that instinct is the 

 source of those actions which procure the means of gratifying 

 appetite, when their effect in procuring those gratifications is 

 already known to the individual who employs them. Knowledge, 

 therefore, as far as it goes, excludes instinct. Now this know- 

 ledge may be either acquired by personal experience, or it may 



