there, in different secret dormitories ; and that, so far 

 from withdrawing into warmer climes, it would ap- 

 pear that they never depart three hundred yards 

 from the village. 



October lo, 1781. 



LETTER C. 

 To THE Honourable Daines Barrington. 



They who write on natural history cannot too 

 frequently advert to instinct, that wonderful, but 

 limited faculty, which, in some instances,- raises the 

 brute creation as it were above reason, and in others 

 leaves them so far below it. Philosophers have de- 

 fined instinct to be that secret influence by which 

 every species is impelled naturally to pursue, at all 

 times, the same way or track, without any teaching 

 or example ; whereas reason, without instruction, 

 would lead them to do that by many methods which 

 instinct effects by one alone. Now this maxim must 

 be taken in a qualified sense ; for there are instances 

 in which instinct does vary and conform to the cir- 

 cumstances of place and convenience. 



It has been remarked that every species of bird 



has a mode of nidification peculiar to itself; so that a 



schoolboy would at once pronounce on the sort of 



nest before him. This is the case among fields and 



woods, and wilds ; but in the villages round London, 



160 



