pbesident's address. 185 



conscious purpose and previously to experience, but also as 

 including, on the one hand mere organic functions, and on the 

 other animal intelligence or sagacity. We must keep these dis- 

 tinctions in view in order to avoid confusion. 



Excluding, then, merely functional and involuntary acts, such 

 as breathing, the action of the heart, and the peristaltic motion 

 of the bowels, Instinct may be held to be the performance of 

 acts in which certain ends are accomplished by the untaught 

 use of appropriate means, in a more or less uniform and deter- 

 minate manner, according to varying circumstances and the 

 organization of the animal, but not according to the varying 

 purposes of an intelligent will. 



Of such instincts examples might be given from every depart- 

 ment of animal life. I need only refer to the well-known in- 

 stances in the habits of the bee, the ant, the spider, &c. 



It may be asked, are these instincts original endowments, or 

 are they resolvable into simpler elements ? 



In answering this question a remarkable order of facts must 

 be taken into account, I mean those usually referred to as cases 

 of variation of Instinct. Take the case mentioned at the last 

 Evening Meeting here by Mr. Howse. The bee, as we all know, 

 seeks its food by entering the flower and so approaching the 

 nectaries ; but it sometimes finds itself in the presence of flowers 

 rich in food which its tongue cannot reach in the usual way, on 

 account of some structural peculiarity in the flower. In such 

 cases it is known to depart from its usual procedure, and to 

 reach the nectary by piercing the base of the corolla from 

 without. Messrs. Howse and Hancock observed bees thus feed- 

 ing on the Menziesia near Kothbury, many of the flowers of 

 which were found to be thus pierced at the base. 



Now, in this, and many other similar departures from the 

 ordinary mode of an instinct which might be mentioned, there 

 is evidently a special adaptation of means to meet an emer- 

 gency — an act of understanding similar to that of the dog who, 

 when he finds the front door shut, goes round to the back. And 

 it is said this adaptive power, and the law of habit operating 

 through the individual on the race, with changing circumstances 



