386 CLAS3 MAMMALIA. 



the solids themselves, and as incapable of a problem as any 

 inanimate body. The action in question is by a superior 

 power, working through the instrumentality of the uncon- 

 scious bee. 



It is thus, in the lower divisions of the Animal Kingdom, 

 that instinct displays itself in the most obvious manner: as 

 we mount through the graduated scale of animal life, to 

 those beings that stand nearest to man, instinct becomes 

 obliterated as we advance; till at last it is to be but faintly 

 and equivocally distinguished. To instance a case, there- 

 fore, of pure, unequivocal, unmixed instinct, it seemed ne- 

 cessary to select from one of the lower classes. That of 

 the bee, however trite, is infinitely in point of ability beyond 

 the utmost reach of the faculties proper to the animal, and 

 it is connected with the two objects of instinct; preserva- 

 tion, in constructing a repository for food, and propagation, 

 in affording a competent nursery for the young. 



In the lower classes of the vertebrated division of the ani- 

 mal world, however, we may find various instinctive actions 

 which exhibit more decided marks of their abstracted nature 

 than the instinctive acts of the Mammalia. " What can we 

 call the principle,'' says Mr. Addison, " which directs 

 every different kind of bird to observe a particular plan 

 in the structure of its nest, and directs all the same spe_ 

 cies to work after the same model? It cannot be imita 

 tion; for though you hatch a crow under a hen, and 

 never let it see any of the works of its own kind, the nest 

 it makes shall be the same, to the laying of a stick, with 

 all the other nests of* the same species. It cannot be rea- 

 son, for were animals endued with it to as great a degree 

 as man, their buildings would be as different as ours, ac- 

 cording to the different conveniences that they would 

 propose to themselves." 



It is obvious that the various formations of the nests of 

 birds, 1 ike the admirable adaptation of the honey-comb,is pu re 



