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nervous system, which they are not, to contend that a sense of feeling was more exerted than in the reproduction of the separate organs of an animal, to support the common wear and tear of animal life.

Why then should it ever have been contended that such a kind of sensation is necessary in the formation of seeds, by the conjoint action of what have been denominated a male and female organization? The stimulus of moisture, of light, heat, and air, evolves equally the specific flower; and the ever-present and all-prevailing law of Nature determines the different parts of the flower, or the different flowers themselves, to be of different characters: the farina is secreted from the anther, a part of which is called the male organ; and as it drops upon the open tube of the pistil, which is denominated the female organ, it becomes a new stimulus, and excites to a new action. But neither stimulus nor action are necessarily sensation, nor the sources of sensation. The pistil, or rather the receptacle which lies at the bottom of the pistil, in consequence of this new excitation, evolves or produces a new material, which we call a seed; but during the formation and evolution of this seed from first to last, there is no more necessity for supposing the existence of any thing like sensation, than during the antecedent stimulus of the light and heat, and moisture, upon the parent stem by which the flower itself became evolved; or during the same stimulus upon the joints or bulbs of the plant by which an equally healthy and perfect progeny has, perhaps, been produced from these different organs.

I have already observed, that in the lowest class of animals we meet with instances of reproduction equally varied, and of the very same nature: sometimes by buds or bulbs, as in the case of the polype; sometimes by slips or lateral offsets, as in one or two species of the leech; and sometimes, and perhaps more generally, by seeds or ova. But as, in the tribes I now refer to, we meet with neither nerves or nervous system, and as the reproduction of living matter does not necessarily demand the existence of a nervous system, or of that corporeal feeling to which alone, so far as we are acquainted with nature, a nervous system is capable of giving birth; we have the strongest reason for supposing that the generation of progeny is, in these cases, as unaccompanied with passion or sensation as in the instance of plants.

I have dwelt the longer upon this subject, as being anxious to divest one of the most elegant and interesting branches of natural history of the grossness and indelicacy with which it has been incrusted by the language and opinions of many modern physiologists: and to open it as widely as possible to the study and pursuit of every one.

It must be obvious, I think, that instinct has no more necessary connexion with feeling or sensation than with intelligence; and that even the faculties of attachment to life, resistance to destruction, the economy of pairing, and the process of generation, though often combined with both sensation and intelligence, are not necessarily combined with either of them; that intelligence is not more discrepant from sensation than sensation is from instinct; that either may exist separately, and that all may exist together.

Whence derive the young of every kind a knowledge of the peculiar powers that are to appertain to them hereafter, even before the full formation of the organs in which those powers are to reside? To adopt the beautiful language of the first physiologist of Rome.

Cornua nata prius vitulo quam frontibus exstent,
Illis iratus petit, atque infestus inurguet:

At catulei pantherarum, scymneique leonum,
Unguibus, ac pedibus jam tum morsuque repugnant,
Vix etiam quom sunt dentes unguesque createi.
Alitum proporso genus alis omne videmus
Fidere, et a pennis tremulum petere auxiliarum.*

The young calf whose horns

Ne'er yet have sprouted, with his naked front
Butts when enrag'd: the lion-whelp or pard
With claws and teeth contends, ere teeth or claws

Scarce spring conspicuous: while the pinion'd tribes
Trust to their wings, and, from th' expanded down
Draw, when first fledg'd, a tremulous defence.

In like manner an infant, in danger of falling from its nurse's arms, stretches out its little hands to break the fall, as though acquainted by experience with the use of such an action. We here meet with an instance of pure instinct; but we pursue the same conduct in adult age, and we have then an example of instinct combined with intelligence; and intelligence, instead of opposing the instinctive exertion, encourages and fortifies it. So when caterpillars, observes Mr. Smellie, are shaken from a tree, in whatever direction they descend, they all instantly turn towards the trunk and climb upwards, though till now they have never been on the surface of the ground.

The vegetable kingdom offers us examples of simple instinct equally singular and marvellous. Thus the stalk of the convolvulus twines from the left or east by the south to the west, the face being towards the south: the phaseolus vulgaris, or kidney-bean, pursues the same course: while the honey-suckle and the hop take a perfectly reverse direction. Who will reveal to us the cause of these differences?

In the following instances the cause is obvious: it proceeds from the peculiar structure and power of the different animals to which they relate : and it would perhaps be as obvious to us in the preceding, were we as intimately acquainted with the nature of plants as of animals. The squirrel, the field-mouse, and the very curious bird called nut-hatch (sitta Europea,) live equally on hazle-nuts; but each of them opens them in a very different manner. The squirrel, after rasping off the small end, splits the shell in two with his long fore-teeth, as a man does with his knife: the field-mouse nibbles a hole with his teeth as regular as if drilled with a whimble, and yet so small that it is wonderful how the kernal can be extracted through it: while the nut-hatch picks an irregular ragged hole with his bill; but as this artist has no paws to hold the nut firm while he pierces it, like an adroit workman he fixes it, as it were, in a vice in some cleft of a tree or in some crevice; when, standing over it, he readily perforates the stubborn shell; and while at work makes a rapping noise that may be heard at a considerable distance.t

The sphex or ichneumon wasp, in its perfect state, feeds on the nectary of flowers; but as soon as she is fitted to deposite her eggs, she becomes actuated by an appetite of another kind. She first bores a small cylindrical hole in a sandy soil, into which, by accurately turning round, she drops an egg: she then seeks out a small green caterpillar that inhabits the leaves of the cabbage-plant, and which she punctures with her sting, yet so slightly

*De Rer. Nat. v. 1038.

+ See White's Nat. Hist. of Selborne,

and delicately as not to kill it; she then rolls it up into a circle, and places it in the sandy nest immediately over the egg. She continues the pursuit till she has counted twelve; and has, in like manner, deposited twelve caterpillars one over the other; and repeats the same process till she has exhausted herself of her entire stock of eggs. She immediately closes the holes and dies, intrusting her eggs to the parent heat of the sun. The egg in each separate cell or aperture is soon hatched, and finds its food duly prepared for it, and from its enfeebled state incapable of resisting its attack, though preserved from putrefaction by the little life that has remained to it. It feeds progressively on the twelve caterpillars; and by the time it has exhausted them, becomes fitted for and converted into a chrysalis ; in due time it awakes from its dormancy, works its way to the surface of the earth, throws off its chrysalid investment, finds itself accommodated with wings, rises into the atmosphere, feeds on the honey of plants instead of on maggots; and at length pursues the very same train of actions to provide itself with a progeny which was pursued by the parent insect the year before.

In what I have thus far advanced, I have chiefly proved, however, that instinct may exist separately; I will next proceed to a few examples, in which it will be clear to every one that it may exist in conjunction with each of the other two principles of sensation and intelligence.

And, first, as to its union with sensation. Wherever a nervous system is to be traced, which alone is the source of sensation, we have abundant proofs of such an alliance. We meet with it, without having language by which to describe it, in the glow and elasticity of health, in the satisfaction of a cheerful meal, and in the refreshment of sound and natural sleep after fatigue; and we meet with it still more obviously, and in diversities which language is capable of characterizing, in all those natural emotions to which we have just adverted, and which, in consequence of such alliance, have obtained the popular name of instinctive sensations or feelings, but which in reality are peculiar instincts combined with peculiar feelings.

Let us select a few other examples. We are told by Galen,* that on opening a goat big with young he found one of the young ones alive, which he hastily snatched up, and took it into a room where there were various vessels severally fitted for the purpose with wine, oil, honey, milk, grains, and fruits. The little kid first rose upon its feet and walked; then shook itself, and scratched its side with one of its hoofs: it next smelt alternately at all the dishes before it, and at last fixed upon and licked up the milk. In this case the sense of smell went distinctly in aid of the instinctive search after food, and determined the particular kind: so that the instinct and the sensation co-operated. Thus rabbits, when left to the operation of pure instinct, dig holes in the ground for warmth and protection; but after continuing for some time in a domestic state, and finding that they can obtain a more comfortable asylum by other means, and with less labour, they seldom pursue, even when they have an opportunity, the instinctive process, but burrow in the straw, or whatever material is provided for

them.

In this case the sense of superior comfort combines itself, as in the preceding, with the instinct, and pursues the same end, though by a change of the means. So again, the new-born young of all animals, in whatever way they take their food, are at first stimulated by instinct alone.

De Locis, lib. vi. cap. 6.

The lamb sucks, the chicken pecks, and the nestling of the sparrow gapes. In like manner, the mother secretes or selects its food from an instinctive stimulus alone. The udder of the dam swells and becomes painful, the crop of the pigeon does the same; and there are some birds, whose common food is grain, that during this season devour for their young, spiders, and other insects, which nothing could induce them to touch at any other time. This sweet intercourse of natural action lays a foundation for something that in a short time shows itself to be superior to instinct, though it has often, but erroneously, been so denominated. The young of two different mothers, if interchanged as soon as they are born or hatched, are as satisfied with the foster or suppositious as with the natural parent; and the mothers, unless made suspicious of the deception, are as satisfied with their foster or suppositious young. But let the same interchange be attempted a week or a month afterwards, and in no case will it succeed. Short as has been the intervening period, there has been a birth of feeling as well as a growth of form; the rising sense has united itself with the already mature instinct; and the natural nurse and the natural nursling will pine equally, if separated from each other.

The poet we have just adverted to, who may pre-eminently be called the poet of nature, has beautifully illustrated this remark by the yearning af fection of the cow for her young calf when it has strayed from her, or she has been robbed of it; hunting after it with intense anxiety in every direction, mourning for it with a cry that cannot fail to wind itself into every feeling heart, and equally refusing the fattening glebe and the refreshing stream.* The female Dugong or sea-cow of the Sumatra coast, whose general history we have already given a glance at,† evinces a like degree of maternal affection; insomuch that when its young has been entrapped or speared, the mother pursues it so closely and so fearlessly as to be taken with the greatest ease. The young sea-calves have a short, sharp, pitiable cry, which they frequently repeat; and, like the stricken deer, are also said to shed tears, which, Sir Thomas Raffles tells us, are carefully preserved by the common people as a charm, the possession of which is supposed to secure the affections of those to whom they are attached in the same manner as they attract the mother to her young.‡

The instinct of this early age, however, belongs to such early age alone, and to the purpose of such early age alone: and when it has answered that purpose it ceases, and we meet with no more trace of it: but the feeling which follows so close upon it, and to which perhaps it has given birth, is of a higher order, and continues for a much longer period of time; and for a period of time, indeed, directly proportioned to its intensity, or in other words, to the ascending rank of sentient or percipient life in which it makes its appearance.

Hence in the two lowest classes of animals, we meet with nothing of the sort whatever; the young of insects and worms having a foreign food provided for them without the intervention of the mother: and hence, too, in various quadrupeds and birds the feeling progressively dies away as the young become independent; while in man we behold the principle of intelligence, in its most lovely and interesting character, a moral and internal feeling, a sense of gratitude and veneration on the one side, of keen complacency and delight on the other, and of active affection on both, catching: hold of the two preceding principles, and producing a strong cord of interunion that can never be broken but with the cords of the heart itself.

* De Rer. Nat. ii. 352. † Ser. II. Lect. II. p. 205. 1 Phil. Trans. 1820. p. 181

Something of the kind is occasionally, indeed, to be met with in quadru peds, as I have formerly observed in the case of the seal and lamantin tribes (trichecus Manatus,) which pass through life in families of single male and single female, never deserting or deserted by their young, till the latter, having reached the term of maturity, separate to found families of their

own.

In these cases we see examples of all the three principles of instinct, sensation, and intelligence in a state of union: and we occasionally meet with still more extraordinary examples of the same fact. One of the most extraordinary, perhaps, is that related by Mr. Gilbert White, in his very interesting History of Selbourn, of the gratitude and affection of a young hare towards a cat by which it had been suckled and brought up; the leveret following the cat about the garden, playing with her like a kitten, and bounding towards her upon her purring or uttering any other call of tenderness.

We see something of the same kind of internal feeling, and often exalted to a still higher pitch, in the gratitude and affection of the fond and faithful dog for a kind and indulgent master; occasionally indeed rising superior to, and openly triumphing over the strongest instinctive feelings of the animal frame, over thirst and hunger, and the love of life itself; and inciting him to perish voluntarily by the side of his master and share his grave, rather than abandon his corse, when in the course of a solitary journey he has suddenly fallen a victim to accident or violence. The late Bishop of Landaff has a striking anecdote to this effect in his very interesting Life, in which he relates the sudden disappearance of a man, who, it seems, had perished on the top of Helvellyn; his body was found two months afterwards in this exposed and desolate spot, with his faithful dog still sitting by it. And he adds in a similar tale, told him by the Duke of Northumberland, concerning a young antelope that had perished by a fall, whose mother immediately quitted the pasture in which she was feeding, sat piteously by the side of the body, which she refused to quit, and died of grief and hunger.

I will only adjoin another case of a like interesting kind that occurred not long since in my own family. A favourite cat, that was accustomed from day to day to take her station quietly at my elbow, on the writingtable, sometimes for hour after hour, while I was engaged in study, became at length less constant in her attendance, as she had a kitten to take care of. One morning she placed herself in the same spot, but seemed unquiet; and, instead of seating herself as usual, continued to rub her furry sides against my hand and pen, as though resolved to draw my attention and make me leave off. As soon as she had accomplished this point she leaped down on the carpet, and made towards the door with a look of great uneasiness. I opened the door for her as she seemed to desire; but instead of going forward, she turned round and looked earnestly at me as though she wished me to follow her, or had something to communicate. I did not fully understand her meaning, and being much engaged at the

Sir Walter Scott has, with much judgment, selected a similar, and perhaps the same, story, as the basis of one of the most impressive and popular ballads in the English language.

I climb'd the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn,
Lakes and mountains beneath me gleam'd misty and wide,
All was still save, by fits, when the eagle was yelling.
And starting around me the echoes replied, &c. &c.

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