252 NASCENT REASON. EMOTION, 



to blind the vigilance, and divert the attention of those 

 who may come near their little ones, is equally curious." 



It may fairly be held that the more varied and complex 

 the Sensorial Impressions capable of being discriminated 

 from one another (the wider the range, that is, of an ani- 

 mal's Cognitive Powers), the more occasion and oppor- 

 tunity is there for elementary modes of Reason to inter- 

 vene between ingoing impressions and the motor responses 

 which. they are destined ultimately to incite. 



But it seems clear that, with the single exception of 

 the sense of Smell, the sensorial endowments of Birds 

 are to be regarded as far more developed than those of 

 Insects. Their far-reaching and discriminative Vision, 

 their acute powers of Hearing, together with their highly 

 refined * sense of Direction,' must of necessity confer 

 upon Birds a power of increasing enormously the range 

 and complexity of their relations with the outside world. 

 To these advantages they add those which accrue from 

 their longer individual lives, and, above all others, from 

 the fact that these superior endowments and opportuni- 

 ties of improvement operate in concert with a vastly more 

 complex Nervous System which they have inherited from 

 a long but indefinite series of simpler ancestors. Need we 

 wonder, then, if the evidence should seem to show, that, 

 while the instincts of Birds are perhaps less elaborate, 

 their adaptive intelligence or Reason, and the strength 

 and definiteness of their Emotions, are unquestionably 

 far superior to those presented by the Social Insects. 



We may, perhaps, safely conclude that, while many 

 Instinctive Actions are more or less immediate products 

 or resultants, consequent upon the undeviating regularity 

 in the recurrence of Visceral States and impressions and 

 of the sense-guided movements which they evoke; Reason, 



