6086 



Reason and Instinct, 



themselves on the plain where water stands so long annually as to 

 allow the lotus and other aqueous plants to come to maturity. 

 When all the ant-horizon is submerged a foot deep they manage 

 to exist by ascending to little houses built of black tenacious loam on 

 stalks of grass and placed higher than the line of inundation. This 

 must have been the result of experience, for, if they had waited till 

 the water actually invaded their terrestrial habitations, they would not 

 have been able to procure materials for their aerial quarters unless 

 they dived down to the bottom for every mouthful of clay." — (Id. 

 p. 328). Once more, " When the wounded buffalo heard the ap- 

 proach of his pursuers he always fled, shifting his stand and doubling 

 on his course in the most cunning manner. In other cases I have 

 known them turn back to a point a few yards from their own trail 

 and then lie down in a hollow for the hunter to come up." — (Id. 

 p. 266). Space will not allow me to do more than allude to 

 the habits and stratagems of the fox, the deer, the hare — not to 

 mention other animals — when subjected to pursuit,* many of which 

 are familiar as household words from their surprising nature and con- 

 tinued publication ; to the devices of the hare when about to resume 

 her form ; of the rabbit for concealing her young, (actions, all 

 of them emanating originally and principally, if not exclusively, from 

 Instinct), in the attempt to illustrate the marvellous analogy observable 

 between the habits and actions of the savage man, under the apprehen- 

 sion of danger, and those of the wild animal when under the powerful 

 impulses of instinctive Fear or self-preservation. 



As to Local direction, a remarkable instance of continual occurrence 

 is cited above. The white man, in the American forest without his 

 compass, loses his way before he has gone out of ear-shot of his tent, 

 and possibly spends hours in delineating with his weary feet ring over 

 ring within the space of a mile or half a mile square. f The red man 



* See Mr. Couch's notice on tlie connexion of Reason and Instinct (Zool. 5667) 

 for a very remarkable case in point as regards the hare. 



f " Long practice is requisite to enable the white man to walk straight, even for 

 half a mile through the bush. At first, he invariably deviates, thinking he is taking a 

 slraiiiht course, and describes a circle, ending at the very spot whence he started. 

 When there has been no sun, I have gone completely round in a square half mile." — 

 (Hardy, i. p. 33). The native of a moorland district, when trying to traverse 

 the moor in a fog, if he lose the familiar track, is in the same predicament. An aged 

 parishioner of mine once told me his experience in a case of this sort. There was no 

 great extent of moor where he went astray, but for six hours he was tramping wearily 

 on in a never-ending, irregular sort of spiral. The crowing of a cock at last revealed 

 to him the neighbourhood of a dwelling, — if I remember right, the very one he had 



