INSTINCT, SENSATION, AND INTELLIGENG E, 



249 



time, shut the door upon her that she might go where she liked. In less 

 than an hour afterwards she had again found an entrance into the room, 

 and drawn close to me ; but instead of mounting the table and rubbing 

 herself against my hand as before, she was now under the table and con- 

 tinued to rub herself against my feet ; on moving which, 1 struck them 

 against a something which seemed to be in their way ; and, on looking 

 down, beheld with equal grief and astonishment, the dead body of her 

 little kitten covered over with cinder-dust, and which, I supposed, had 

 been ahve and in good health. I now entered into the entire train of 

 this afflicted cat's feelings. She had suddenly lost the nursling she doted 

 on, and was resolved to make me acquainted with it, — assuredly that 

 I might know her grief, and probably also that I might inquire into the 

 cause ; and finding me too dull to understand her expressive motioning 

 that I would follow her to the cinder-heap on which the dead kitten had 

 been thrown, she took the great labour of bringing it to me herself, 

 from the area on the basement floor, and up a whole flight of stairs, and 

 laid it at my feet. I took up the kitten in my hand, the cat stiJl following 

 me, made inquiry into the cause of its death, which 1 found, upon sum- 

 moning the servants, to have been an accident in which no one was 

 much to blame ; and the yearning mother having thus obtained her object, 

 and gotten her master to enter into her cause, and divide her sorrows 

 with her, gradually took comfort, and resumed her former station by my side. 



Yet, not unfrequently we meet with instances of the union of intelligence 

 alone with instinct alone ; of design and contrivance directed to extraor- 

 dinary occasions, no moral or internal feeling being necessary. 



The rook usually and instinctively builds her nest in the tallest branches 

 of the tallest trees ; in Welbourn churcli-yard, however, as we learn in a 

 letter from Dr. Darwin, from a relative, a rookery was not long since 

 formed on the outside of the spire, and the tops of the loftiest windows. 

 There had formerly been a row or grove of high trees in the neighbourhood, 

 but they had been cut down ; and their aerial tenants being dispossessed 

 of their proper mansion, had betaken themselves to the church-spire 

 and Avindows, as the most appropriate building for their purpose ; and 

 had thus manifestly evinced the alliance of instinct and intelligence,* 

 So the jackdaws of Selbourn, according to Mr. White, not finding a suf- 

 ficiency of towers and steeples, and lofty houses, on which they usually 

 hung their nests in this pleasant village, accommodated themselves to the 

 occasion, and built them in forsaken rabbit burrows. 



The ostrich is accused of a total want of natural feeling, because she 

 abandons her eggs to be hatched by the heat of the sun ; when incubation 

 is necessary, however, the ostrich instinctively employs it, and that too in 

 conjunction with an intelligence which is rarely evinced by other birds. 

 Thus, in Senegal, where the heat is still great, she relinquishes her eggs 

 during the day, but sits upon them through the night ; and at the Cape of 

 Good Hope, where the heat is less considerable, she sits upon them, like 

 other bn-ds, both day and night. In like manner ducks and geese, 

 though not renowned for .sagacity, cover up their eggs when they quit 

 them, till they return to their nest ; and there are few birds that do not 

 turn and shift their eggs at different periods of the tedious process of in- 

 /-ubation, so as to give an equal degree of warmth to every part. We have 



* Darw. 9ro. i. p. 24L 



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