288 
NATURAL HISTORY 
this district, might be found there, in different secret doi 
mitories; and that, so far from withdrawing into warmer 
climes, it would appear that they never depart 300 yards 
f'om t'le village. 
LETTER LVL 
TO THE HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 
HEY who write on natural history cannot too 
frequently advert to instinct, that wonderful 
limited faculty, which, in some instances, 
raises the brute creation as it were above 
reason, and in others leaves them so far below 
it. Philosophers have defined instinct to be that secret 
influence by which every species is impelled naturally to 
pursue, at all times, the same way or track, without any 
teaching or example ; whereas reason, without instruction, 
would often vary and do that by many methods which in- 
stinct effects by one alone. Now this maxim must be taken 
in a qualified sense ; for there are instances in which instinct 
does vary and conform to the circumstances of place and 
convenience. 
It has been remarked that every species of bird has a 
mode of nidification peculiar to itself ; so that a schoolboy 
would at once pronounce on the sort of nest before him. 
This is the case among fields and woods and wilds ; but in 
the villages round London, where mosses and gossamer, and 
cotton from vegetables, are hardly to be found, the nest of 
the chaffinch has not that elegant, finished appearance, nor 
is it so beautifully studded with lichens, as in a more rural 
district ; and the wren is obliged to construct its house 
with straws and dry grasses, which do not give it that 
rotundity and compactness so remarkable in the edifices of 
that little architect.^ Again, the regular nest of the house 
May not the use of bright and frcsh materials in the country, and 
