loS AN INTRODUCTION TO ZOOLOGY. 



may reasonably be so termed in the buman being as 

 ia other animals. The instinct of self-preservation, 

 the instinct of parental love, dictate actions which 

 few people need to be taught to do. numan races 

 of totally different origin, in widely separated places 

 and times, fashion, to meet the necessities of savage 

 life, the same weapons and the same tools. The 

 ancestral process which is indicated by the term 

 "well-bred" results in instincts of delicacy in mind 

 and manners, that render teaching and experience 

 unnecessary. Certain people and certain families, 

 again, have instinctive likes and dislikes for certain 

 animals or things. With others, the ability to read 

 human character at sight is an instinct, innate and 

 untaught, which the person who exercises it is nob 

 able to analyze or explain. 



If the term instinct be used in a sense capable of 

 including the results of ancestral experience in human 

 beings too, no objection can be made to its employ- 

 ment. 



While some of the cases of action under given 

 circumstances formerly ascribed to instinct may more 

 probably be put down as the result of the acutest 

 reasoning, there are other cases in which apparently 

 wonderful instinct may be largely the work of reflex 

 action. Take the following often-quoted instance 

 from the writings of the Rev. J. G. Wood,^ who 

 watched the hatching of the eggs of the cuttle-fish. 



' " Commou Objects of the Sea-shore," chap. v. 



