INSTINCT AND REASON, OQ] 
Do not both works result in an equally accurate cell, or is 
there the faintest difference between its first and last work ? 
How ditterent from a Man’s work, who thinks about what he 
is doing, and whose thought results in improvement—while 
his first work infallibly betrays his original unskilfulness aud 
inexperience. 
And if it cannot be conceded that the bee thinks while 
constructing its admirably adapted cells, why should it be 
supposed that the ant thinks when it is engaged in the per- 
formance of those extraordinary feats of instinct which are 
the admiration of all who study its ways, though not 
perhaps more really noteworthy than the economy of the 
hive, of which the construction of the comb is a leading 
feature? If indeed these complicated instincts were carried 
on under the guidance of thought, bees and ants, with their 
tiny ganglia, would be even more surprising in their so-called 
“intellectual” powers than Man, in view of the brief space 
of the lives (briefer of bees than of ants) to which these 
mental phenomena are crowded, and the entire impossibility 
of that experience, which, in really reasoning beings, is an 
essential both of intellectuality and of progress (see note 
p- 4). And further, to carry on the argument for the un- 
tenability of insect “intelligence,” is it supposed that the 
caterpillar employs a reasoning faculty in the determination 
of the juncture and method of spinning its cocoon; the 
moth, upon the nature of the plant upon which it shall 
deposit its eggs, in order that it may provide a suitable food 
for its prospective young’; or the spider (so nearly allied to 
insects), upon the position and geometrical arrangement of 
the threads of its ingenious web ? 
Again, to take instavces from animals higher in the scale. 
Does the bird (we would ask) think over the weaving of her 
nest, or the selection of a site for its buildmg? Iam aware 
that it has been claimed by some writers that young birds do 
not make so perfect a nest as the old ones, but on, I believe, 
most insufficient data. Leroy and Wilson are quoted, but 
without references. A writer in Nature also asserts that 
the chaffinch, when taken to New Zealand, varies the 
character of its nest, and I think, most unnecessarily jumps to 
the conclusion that the birds so varied, because “they were 
at a loss for a design, and had no nests to copy”! Surely 
a difference in environment would be amply sufficient to 
account for the slight change (see Wallace’s Darwinism). 
Does the young duckling, just running from the newly- 
chipped egg, or from under the wing of its foster-mother, 
