388 TRANSMISSION 



an insect burrows a cavity and lays its egg. It then attacks 

 another insect, stings it so as to paralyze but not to kill it, drags 

 it to the burrow, tucks it in next to the egg where it will serve 

 as food to the larva, seals all up, and goes away. 



The yucca moth emerges from the cocoon just as the yucca 

 opens its flowers, each for a single night. The female collects 

 pollen from one flower and kneads it into a bundle. She then 

 flies to another, makes a puncture, and lays her egg among the 

 ovules, after which she darts to the stigma and " stuffs the 

 pollen pellet into the funnel-shaped opening." V It is supposed 

 that this is the only way in which the insect reproduces, and the 

 chief way in which the yucca is fertilized. 



Here definite and important ends are dependent not only 

 upon complicated acts but also upon the serial order of their per- 

 formance, all without previous knowledge or experience on the 

 part of the agent, for the female in most cases is performing 

 this act for the first time, and in many cases will not live till the 

 eggs hatch. Given any amount of intelligence, therefore, she 

 could not know the final result of her own industry, although 

 the entire process has every appearance of intelligent, even delib- 

 erate, action. It is noticeable at once that instincts of this sort 

 are concerned with those acts which, like reproduction, are funda- 

 mental to race preservation. 



Is instinct founded on habit ? The outcome of most instinc- 

 tive acts is so clearly the preservation of life and the good of 

 the species, the acts themselves are often so extremely compli- 

 cated, their separate steps are so nicely adjusted to the final 

 end, their proper serial order is so accurately observed, the 

 appearance of deliberate, purposeful action is so genuine, the 

 need of intelligent direction at some period of the organization of 

 the series is so apparent, the importance of the ends achieved is 

 so obvious, and the similarity between the instinct of a race and 

 the habit of an individual is so close that many naturalists have 

 leaped to the conclusion that instinct is inherited habit ; in other 

 words, that what has been found beneficial in the experience of 

 individuals has become habitual with them, and through their 

 descendants it has become the habit of the race. This position 



1 A free transcript from Morgan, Habit and Instinct, p. 14. 



