INSTINCT, SENSATION, AND INTELLIGENCE. 



227 



has been a birth of feeling^ as well as a growth of form ; the rising sense has 

 united itself with the already mature instinct ; and the natural nurse and the 

 natural nursling will pine equally, if separated from each other. 



The poet we have just adverted to, who may pre-eminently be called the 

 poet of nature, has beautifully illustrated this remark by the yearning affec- 

 tion of the cow for her young calf when it has strayed from her or she has 

 been robbe'd of it ; hunting after it with intense anxiety in every direction, 

 mourning for it with a cry that cannot fail to wind itself into every feeling 

 heart, and equally refusing the fattening ^lebe and the refreshing stream.* 

 The female dugong or sea-cow of the Sumatra coast, whose general history 

 we have already given a glance at,t evinces a like degree of maternal affec- 

 tion ; insomuch that when its young has been entrapped or speared, the 

 mother pursues it so closely and so fearlessly as to be taken with the greatest 

 ease. The young sea-calves have a short, sharp, pitiable cry,- which they 

 frequently repeat ; and, like the stricken deer, are also said to shed tears, 

 which. Sir Thomas Raffles tells us, are carefully preserved by the common 

 people as a charm, the possession of which is supposed to secure the affec- 

 tions of those to whom they are attached in the same manner as they attract 

 the mother to her young.| 



The instinct of this early age, however, belongs to such early age alone, 

 and to the purpose of such early age alone : and when it has answered that 

 purpose it ceases, and we meet with no more trace of it : but the feeling 

 which follows so close upon it, and to which, perhaps, it has given birth, is 

 of a higher order, and continues for a much longer period of time ; and for 

 a period of time, indeed, directly proportioned to its intensity, or, in fothei 

 words, to the ascending rank of sentient or percipient life in which it makes 

 its appearance. 



Hence in the -two lowest classes of animals, we meet with nothing of the 

 sort whatever ; the young of insects and worms having a foreign food pro- 

 vided for them without the intervention of the mother : and hence, too, in 

 various quadrupeds and birds the feeling progressively dies away as the 

 young become independent ; while in man we behold the principle of intelli- 

 gence, in its most lovely and interesting character, a moral and internal feel- 

 ing, a sense of gratitude and veneration on the one side, of keen complacency 

 and delight on the other, and of active affection on both, catching hold of the 

 two preceding principles, and producing a strong cord of interunion that can 

 never be broken but with the cords of the heart itself. 



Something of the kind is occasionally, indeed, to be met with in quadru- 

 peds, as I have formerly observed in the case of the seal and lamantin tribes 

 (trichecus Manatus), which pass through life in families of single male and 

 single female, never deserting or deserted by their young, till the latter, hav- 

 ing reached the term of maturity, separate to found families of their own. 



In these cases we see examples of all the three principles of instinct, sen- 

 sation, and intelligence iii a state of union: and we occasionally meet with still 

 more extraordinary examples of the same fact. One of the most extraordi- 

 nary, perhaps, is that related by Mr. Gilbert White, in his very interesting 

 History of Selbourn, of the gratitude and affection of a young hare towards a 

 cat by which it had been suckled and brought up ; the leveret following the 

 cat about the garden, playing with her like a kitten, and bounding towards 

 her upon her purring or uttering any other call of tendernesSc 



We see something of the same kind of internal feeling, and often exalted 

 to a still higher pitch, in the gratitude and affection of the fond and faithful 

 dog for a kind and indulgent master ; occasionally, indeed, rising superior to, 

 and openly triumphing over, the strongest instinctive feelings of the animal 

 frame, over thirst and hunger, and the love of life itself; and inciting him to 

 perish voluntarily by the side of his master and share his grave, rather than 

 abandon his corse, when, in the course of a solitary journey, he has suddenly 

 fallen a victim to accident or violence. The late Bishop of Landaff has a 



* De Rer. Nat. ii. 352. f Series u. Lecture ii. p. 192. 



t PhU. Trans. 1820, p. 181. 



P2 



