104 



The Natuealist. 



self-consciousness, or perception of its own existence and identity. 

 The sensation of hunger impels it to eat ; but in its choice of food, its 

 rejection of the wrong plant and its selection of the right one, it 

 exercises discrimination or judgment. In confinement, its attempts to 

 regain its freedom are manifest, but these attempts could not surely be 

 made without the sense of captivity and the desire to escape. Its 

 capacity for dissimulating I have already noticed at some length ; and 

 from its ability to overcome obstacles, and to invent means for 

 accomplishing its purposes, as well as from the practical uses to which 

 it turns its experience^ I am compelled to draw the conclusion that 

 caterpillars are capable of exercising to a remarkable degree what I 

 have ventured to lay down as the faculty of reason — the capability of 

 drawing a deduction from premises. 



In conclusion, let me say that I am fully aware of having only 

 skimmed the surface of a subject capable of being elaborated into the 

 vast depths of physiology and psychology ; but I trust my remarks 

 will be considered as the contribution of a lover of nature rather than 

 a student of science, towards the solution of the question of the 

 reasoning powers of the lower forms of the animal world. I have only 

 to add that what I have said is based, not upon the thoughts or the 

 writings of others, but upon my own personal and individual observa- 

 tion. My object will be accomplished if I have so far interested any 

 one here that he will look with increased attention upon that very 

 wonderful, but very common spectacle, a caterpillar ; or in the words 

 of a well-known writer, learn 



" To watch the workings of instinct, that grosser reason of brutes ; 



" To trace the consummate skill that hath modelled the anatomy of 

 insects 



" To learn a use in the beetle, and more than a beauty in the 

 butterfly ; 



" To recognise affections in a moth, and look with admiration on a 

 spider." 



" Yet thou wert once a worm, a thing that crept 

 On the bare earth, then wrought a tomb and slept ; 

 And such is man, soon from his cell of clay, 

 To burst, a seraph, in the blaze of day. " 



J6^, Dewshiry Eoad, Leeds. 



