ANIMAL NOTABLES 175 



the material was perforated. The oldest country people 

 in the neighbourhood say they have never seen such a 

 thing before, and they think the wasps cut away the stuff 

 to make nests. Is this possible ? 



H. MAECUS. 



October 7, 1911. 



NOTE. That, surely, was the reason. The story is an 

 interesting example of the co-operation of instinct and 

 intelligence. Bergson's view that instinct and intelli- 

 gence are ' ' expressions of life on divergent tacks of evolu- 

 tion " is almost certainly the true one. Driesch has called - 

 instinct " a complicated reaction that is perfect the first 

 time." It is performance without practice, a germinal 

 variation of the ancestors of the species sifted by natural 

 selection, brightened by practice, and inherited in suc- 

 ceeding generations. It is an hereditary reaction to the 

 necessities of life, and so often can and does play the 

 animal false in novel circumstances. One remembers 

 Faber's experiment with the caterpillar of the Proces- 

 sionary Moth. They go hunting expeditions in a follow - 

 my-leader- fashion, and Fabre, by placing the head of .the 

 leader behind the tail of the last of them, saw them go 

 round and round in a circle for eight days. But it is 

 foolish to despise instinct because it is a routine action, 

 and sometimes fails the creature in an emergency. It is 

 necessary for economising functions, for setting the 

 creature free to experiment in directions demanding 

 higher faculties. And its adaptation to needs are as 

 perfect as though they were miracles, which, if the word 

 "inspiration" be substituted for miracles, indeed they 

 are. 



The building of the wasps' nest then is pure instinct, 

 but the choice of this particular material was an exercise 

 of intelligence. The example may be paralleled in the 

 nest-building of birds. The building of the nest is an 

 instinctive action, an ancestral inheritance. But the 

 choice of the site is an intelligent action, depending upon 



