INTERNAL ANATOMY OF INSECTS. 31 
will make him abstain from the most tempting dainties : 
and in like manner a bee will quit the nectary of a flower, 
however amply replenished with sweets, if alarmed by 
any interruption. ‘The ants on which Buonaparte amused 
himself with experiments at St. Helena, though they 
stormed his sugar-bason when defended by a fosse of 
water, controlled their instinct and desisted when it was 
surrounded with vinegar?: and in the remarkable in- 
stance communicated to Dr. Leach by Sir Joseph Banks, 
the instinct of a crippled spider so completely changed, 
that from a sedentary web-weaver it became a hunter”. 
There is evidently, therefore, no analogy between ac- 
tions strictly mechanical and instincts, which, though 
they may often seem to be excited by mechanical causes, 
are liable to be restrained or modified by the connexion 
of the instinctive and intellectual faculties*; and while 
we are ignorant how this connexion takes place, it is ob- 
viously impossible to reason logically on the subject. 
In thus denying that any existing mechanical theory of 
instinct is satisfactory, I by no means intend to assert that 
instinct is purely zvtellectual. I have already given you 
my opinion‘, that it is not the effect of any immediate 
agency of the Deity; nor am I prepared to assent to the 
doctrine of a writer, who has in some respects written 
ably on the subject in question, who says, that “ the 
Divine Energy does in reality act not zmmediately, but 
mediately, or through the medium of moral and zntellec- 
tual influences upon the nature or consciousness of the 
creature, in the production of the various, and in many 
instances truly wonderful, actions which they perform °.” 
@ Antommarchi’s Last Days of Napoleon. 
> Linn. Trans. x1. 393. © Vou. IT. 4th Ed. p. 515. 
“ Tbid. p. 469. © Zoological Journal, n°. 1. 5, 
