NATURAL THEOLOGY. 327 



lieve the same thing is true of all gregarious quad- 

 rupeds."^ 



In this part of the case the variety of resources, 

 expedients, and materials which animals of the 

 same species are said to have recourse to under 

 ditferent circumstances, and when differently sup- 

 plied, makes nothing against the doctrine of in- 

 stincts. The thing which we want to account for 

 is the propensity. The propensity being there, it 

 is probable enough that it may put the animal 

 upon different actions according to different exi- 

 gencies. And this adaptation of resources may 

 look like the effect of art and consideration rather 

 than of instinct ; but still the propenshy is instinc- 

 tive. For instance, suppose what is related of the 

 woodpecker to be true, that in Europe she de- 

 posits her eggs in cavities which she scoops out 

 in the trunks of soft or decayed trees, and in 

 which cavities the eggs lie concealed from the eye, 

 and in some sort safe from the hand of man, but 

 that, in the forests of Guinea and the Brazils, 

 which man seldom frequents, the same bird hangs 



" In the natural and instinctive feelings of man, as contradis- 

 tinguished from those which have been modified by reason, some- 

 thing of the same kind may be observed. The mutual relation of 

 protection and dependence, produced by power and weakness, is 

 of this description. A helpless infant excites much stronger sym- 

 pathy in the mother than the child that can shift for itself; and 

 hence the partiality, accompanied by blindness to defects, vv^hich 

 most parents entertain towards children whose natural deficiency, 

 whether bodily or mental, throws tliem on their care long after the 

 season of infancy. 



