NATURAL THEOLOGY. 323 



caterpillar which is to issue from her egg, draws 

 its appropriate food. The butterfly cannot taste 

 the cabbage : cabbage is no food for her ; yet in 

 the cabbage, not by chance, but studiously and 

 electively, she lays her eggs. There are, amongst 

 many other kinds, the willow-caterpillar and the 

 cabbage-caterpillar ; but we never find upon a wil- 

 low the caterpillar which eats the cabbage, nor the 

 converse. This choice, as appears to me, cannot 

 in the butterfly proceed from instruction. She 

 had no teacher in her caterpillar state. She never 

 knew her parent. I do not see, therefore, how 

 knowledge acquired by experience, if it ever were 

 such, could be transmitted from one generation to 

 another. There is no opportunity either for in- 

 struction or imitation. The parent race is gon*- 

 before the new brood is hatched. And if it be 

 original reasoning in the butterfly, it is profound 

 reasoning indeed. She must remember her cater- 

 pillar state, its tastes and habits, of which memory 

 she shows no signs whatever. She must conclude 

 from analogy, (for here her recollection cannot 

 serve her,) that the little round body which drops 

 from her abdomen will at a future period produce 

 , a living creature, not like herself, but like the cater- 

 pillar which she remembers herself once to have 

 been. Under the influence of these reflections, 

 she goes about to make provision for an order of 

 things which she concludes will some time or 

 other take place. And it is to bie observed, that 

 not a few out of many, but that all butterflies 



