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INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



statement of a hypothesis of which the enunciation is nearly 

 unintelligible, and built upon the assumption of the presence 

 of an unseen fluid, and of the existence of the animal some 

 millions of years, is quite sufficient, and would even be 

 unnecessary if it were not of such late origin. Neither shall 

 I detain you with any formal consideration of the hypothesis 

 advanced by Addison and some other authors, that instinct is 

 an immediate and constant impulse of the Deity ; which, to 

 omit other obvious objections, is sufficiently refuted by the 

 fact, that animals in their instincts are sometimes at fault, 

 and commit mistakes, which on the above supposition could 

 not in any case happen. 



The only doctrine on the subject of instinct requiring any 

 thing like a formal refutation is that which, contending for 

 the identity of this faculty with reason in man, maintains 

 that all the actions of animals, however complicated, are, like 

 those of the human race, the result of observation, invention, 

 and experience. This theory, maintained by the sceptics, 

 Pythagoras, Plato, and some other ancient philosophers, and 

 in modern times by Helvetius, Condillac, and Smellie, has 

 been by none more ingeniously supported than by Dr. 

 Darwin, who in the chapter treating on instinct, in the first 

 volume of his Zoonomia, has brought forward a collection of 

 facts which give it a great air of plausibility. This plausi- 

 bility, however, is merely superficial ; and the result of a 

 rigorous examination by any competent judge is, that the 

 greater part of Dr. Darwin's facts bear more strongly in 

 favour of the dissimilarity of instinct and reason than of their 

 identity: and that those few which seem to support the 

 latter position are built upon the relations of persons ig- 

 norant of natural history, who have confused together 

 distinct species of animals. Thus, because some anonymous 

 informant told him that hive-bees when transported to 

 Barbadoes, where there is no winter, ceased to lay up a store 

 of honey, Dr. Darwin infers that all the operations of these 

 insects are guided by reason and the adaptation of means 

 to an end — a very just inference, if the statement from 

 which it is drawn were accurate ; but that it is not so is 

 known to every naturalist acquainted with the fact that many 



