686 
REVIEW. 
Quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non. — Hon. 
Illustrations of Instinct, deduced from the Habits of 
British Animals. By Jonathan Couch, F.L.S., &c. Van 
Voorst, London, 8vo, pp. 343. 
Allowing that the proper study of mankind in general is man, 
the veterinary part of the creation will not probably be accused of 
impertinence in assuming that their proper study is brute or beast 
kind ; nor will veterinarians themselves experience any other feel- 
ing but one of pride and satisfaction in being called from the study 
of the body of the brute to the investigation of his mind : for, that 
mind, in the sense of intellect or reason, he possesses, is no longer 
matter of dispute among those who have watched animal nature 
the closest, and given the subject, in all its bearings and relations, 
their best consideration. The Gordian knot which fastens reason 
to instinct, and which the philosophers of old, without giving them- 
selves the trouble to untie, cut at once in two, by declaring that 
instinct was the faculty or property of the brute, and reason of 
man, it has been Mr. Couch’s business in the work before us to 
untwist, fold by fold ; in the course of which complex task not 
only has he set these abstruse subjects in novel lights, but he has 
disencumbered them of much collateral matter of fact which clung 
to them, and concealed from view their veritable natures. Mr. 
Couch, through his “ Illustrations,” has literally dissected the ani- 
mal property of instinct. He has shewn that the simplest forms 
of animal existence are destitute of any such property ; he has 
caught its dawning in the ascending scale of animal orgasm ; he has 
found the instincts multiplying in animal bodies as tissues and 
organs increased in them ; he has demonstrated instincts in the fullest 
number in the lord of the creation himself. Altogether, we can assure 
our readers it is many a day since we have, on this much debated 
subject, “ instinct,” found ourselves at once edified and entertained 
to the degree we have been by Mr. Couch’s sensible observations ; 
and what has rendered our pleasure the greater is, that his “ Illus- 
trations” have, for the most part, been drawn from animals of our 
own country. 
“To acquire an accurate idea of the intrinsic nature of the 
faculty termed Instinct, it will be requisite, first, to notice the con- 
ditions of living existence below it in the scale of nature ; in order 
