Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries http://www.archive.org/details/dialoguesoninstiOObrou DIALOGUES ON INSTINCT ; WITH ANALYTICAL VIEW OF THE RESEARCHES ON FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM, F.R.S., And Member of the National Institute of France. ESTNUt HILL, MASS, LONDON: CHARLES KNIGHT AND CO, LUDGATE STREET. 1844. 1/ . 190207 Ill NOTICE FROM THE EDITOR OF THE WEEKLY VOLUME. Lord Brougham has kindly consented to the re- publication, in this cheap and compact form, of his (i Dialogues on Instinct " and his " View of the Researches on Fossil Osteology," which formed a considerable part of his " Dissertations on subjects of Science connected with Natural Theology," in the two supplementary volumes of the edition of Paley's " Natural Theology," in 5 vols., by Lord Brougham and the late Sir Charles Bell. Lord Brougham has translated the Latin quotations for this edition. IV CONTENTS. OP INSTINCT. FAOK FIRST BOOK, OR DIALOGUE.— (Facts.) . . .13 SECOND BOOK, OR DIALOGUE.— (Theory.) . . 53 THIRD BOOK, OR DIALOGUE. Animal Intelligence.— (Facts.) 96 FOURTH BOOK, OR DIALOGUE. Animal Intelligence.— (Theory.) 137 NOTE TO THE DIALOGUES 1(55 NOTE ON THE GLOW-WORM 166 ANALYTICAL VIEW OF CUVIER'S RESEARCHES ON FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY, AND APPLICATION TO NA- TURAL THEOLOGY 171 LABOURS OF CUVIER'S SUCCESSORS 239 NOTES ON THE FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY 267 GENERAL NOTE RESPECTING EVIDENCES OF DESIGN 269 Place — Brougham, in Westmoreland. Time— Sept. 1837. Persons — A. Lord Spencer (Althorp). B. Lord Brougham. OF INSTINCT. BOOK, OR DIALOGUE I. INSTINCT— Introduction ; (Facts). When the General Election of 1837 was near its close, and every day brought the accounts of those mighty boasts of our expected successes under the new reign, so idly made, being overthrown by the activity and resources of our adversaries and the listlessness of the people on our behalf, Lord A. came to me on his way to the North, where he was minded to diversify with field-sports his habitual life of farming. Those pursuits had never inter- fered with the duty he owed his country as long as he deemed that the sacrifice of all his domestic comforts could prove serviceable to his public prin- ciples ; nor had they ever at any time prevented him from cultivating a sound philosophy, in the study of which much of his leisure is always con- sumed. "When I passed a few days with him at Wiseton, the summer before, we had discussed to- gether some of the more interesting topics which form the subject of these speculations, connected with Natural Theology, though of a substantive interest independent of the relation in which they B 14 INSTINCT. stand to that sublime inquiry; and, while I re- mained at Harrington, we had corresponded con- stantly on the subject of Instinct, one of the most curious in its minute details and of the most inter- esting in its bearings upon the philosophy of mind, independent of its immediate connexion with theo- logical speculations, but, it must at the same time be admitted, one of the most difficult, and upon which the labours of philosophers have cast a very imperfect light. It was natural then that we should renew these discussions when we afterwards met in "Westmoreland. The weather being line, we ranged somewhat among the lake scenery, and by the rivers and through the woods which variegate our northern country. There was not much to tempt us in the aspect of public affairs, which, if not gloomy for the country at large, was yet not very flattering for the liberal party, among whom the single object seemed now to be the retention of office, and who might say with the Roman patriot in the decline of liberty, — " Nostris , enim vitiis, non casu aliquo, rempublicam verbo retinemus, reapse vero jampridem amisimus."* Nor, indeed, on these matters was there a perfect agreement between us two ; for while we augured as little fa- vourably the one as the other of our prospects, we ascribed to different causes the condition of affairs which gave rise to these forebodings : he, tracing it to the great natural weight and influence of the Tories throughout the country, both in church and state ; I, relying more on the energies of an im- proved and active people, provided the government * " By our own misconduct, not by any calamity, though we may still have the name of a free government, we yet have lost the reality." — Cic. Frag, de Rep. lib. v. FACTS. 15 had acted so as to merit tlieir support ; but lament- ing that no pains had been taken by them to show any superiority of popular principles, or make the country feel itself better off under their rule than they would have been under the adverse faction, while I perceived sufficiently plain indications that the accession of the Court favour in this new reign would have the effect of lessening rather than pro- moting any popular tendencies which might still exist. Altogether, therefore, the state of the com- monwealth was a subject less suited to engage our conversation ; and we naturally dwelt little upon passing and unpleasing topics, as unsatisfactory, transitory, and fleeting — " ista quae nee percunctari nee audire sine molestia possumus."* But upon those matters of permanent interest and universal importance, and which the follies or faults of men could not despoil of their dignity or deprive of their relish, we loved to expatiate ; and coming to the island in the neighbouring river, found a con- venient seat where the discussion might be carried on under the cool shade which the wood afforded against an autumnal sun: "Here," said I, "we may resume our Wiseton conversation." — " Ven- tum in insulam est. Hac vero nihil est amoenius ; utenim hoc quasi rostro finditur Fibrenus, et divisus equaliter in duas partes latera heec alluit, rapi- deque dilapsus cito in unum confluit, et tantuni complectitur quod satis sit modicse palsestrse loci ; quo effecto tanquam id habuerit operis ac muneris nt hanc nobis efficeret sedem ad disputandum, statim praecipitat in Lirem."f — " Here," said I, "we may * " Things which we can neither inquire about nor hear without vexation." — Cic. Acad. Qussst. lib. ii. f " We came to the island. But than this spot nothing b2 16 INSTINCT. resume our Wiseton conversation;" "si videtur considamus hie in umbra, atque ad earn partem ser- monis ex qua egressi sumus revertamur."* A. Have you reconsidered my opinion, or rather the inclination of opinion, which I had last year, that it will be advisable, if not necessary, to begin with defining Instinct, in order that we may the more clearly understand what we are discussing ? JB. I have indeed ; and I remain of my own, as often happens through obstinacy and unwillingness to give up a preconceived notion ; but here it is, I believe, from much reflection upon the subject, that I still regard the definition as rather the end of our inquiry than its commencement. Indeed, this may generally be observed of metaphysical, or rather psychological inquiries: they are not like those of the mathematician, who must begin by defining ; but that is because his definition is, in fact, a statement of part of the hypothesis in each proposition. Thus, whoever enunciates any pro- position respecting a property of the circle predi- cates that property of a figure whose radii are all equal ; and it is as if he began by saying, " Let there be a curve line, such that all the straight lines drawn from its points to another point within can be more agreeable ; for here the Fibrenus is split as by the prow of a vessel, and being divided into two equal branches, washes the sides ; then, after rapidly separating, it quickly unites in one stream, embracing space enough of ground for a moderate-sized place of exercise : after which, as if it only had the work and office of providing us with a seat for our discussion, it straightway falls into the Liris." — Cic de Leg. lib. ii. * " If you please we may here sit down under this shade, and revert to that part of our conversation from which we had departed." — Cic. de Leg. lib. ii. FACTS. 17 it are equal, then I say that the rectangles are equal, which, &c." The general definition only saves the trouble of repeating this assumption, as part of the hypothesis in each proposition. But the nature of instinct, or of any other thing of which we discourse in psychology, is not the hypo- thesis we start from ; it is the goal or conclusion we are seeking to arrive at. Indeed, so it is in physical science also ; we do not begin, but end, by defining the qualities of bodies, or their action on one another. A. I grant this. But if there be more things than one which men call by the same name, for example, of Instinct, must we not begin by ascer- taining what we mean by the word, in order to avoid confusion ? And this seems to bring on the necessity at least of some definition. B. I agree that there must in this case be a definition ; but it is only a definition of terms, and does not imply our stating the nature of the thing- defined : it only implies that we must understand what the thing is to which the given word applies, and, if two things go under the same name, that we should be agreed in the outset which of the two things we mean when we use the word ; perhaps, that we invest some second name, or give some qualifying addition to the given one, to express one of the two things, and keep the different mean- ings distinct. A. The best way will be that we should come to particulars — give an example or two : perhaps it may suffice to mention the different kinds of Instinct, if, which I take for granted you do not doubt, there be more things than one going under that name. 18 INSTINCT. B. Certainly ; and there can here be no diffi- culty at all in our way; and, to show you how little alarmed I am at denning, when it is clear that I am only called upon to define a word, and thereby make a distinct reference to a thing known or unknown in its own nature — not to pretend giving an account of that nature — I will at once begin by both inventing names and defining their meaning. There are some Instincts which may be called physical, and others mental, in the animal system ; by physical I mean those actions or mo- tions or states of body which are involuntary ; as the action of the heart, and the peristaltic motion of the bowels, over which, generally speaking, we have no direct control by the operation of the will — for I put out of view such rare instances, almost monstrous, as Darwin has recorded of a person who could suspend the pulsations of his heart at pleasure, and another, still more rare, of one who could, at will, move his bowels by acce- lerating the peristaltic action* Even if all men could acquire such control over those motions, they would still be involuntary ; because they could still be carried on wholly without our will interfering, and without our minds necessarily having any knowledge whatever of them. So the secretions are all performed involuntarily, and may go on wholly without our knowledge ; we can affect them as we can the involuntary motions of the heart and fluids, indirectly, because the passions and feelings of the mind have always an effect upon them ; but still they exist and proceed, the parts perform their functions, and those functions serve the ends of their appointment, wholly independent * Zoonomia. FACTS. 19 of our will, or of any effort whatever on our part. "We can affect them also immediately through the influence of physical agents, voluntarily applied as stimulants or sedatives, or the operation of volun- tary motion, as well as mediately by the power which the mind derives from its union with the body ; but they can go on of themselves, and, in all cases of healthy condition, go on better without any the least interruption on our part than with it. A. This is certain : my only doubt is whether these can be justly or correctly termed instinctive operations at all. When I speak of Instinct, I mean something very different ; namely, those vo- luntary movements, or that voluntary action of the mental faculties which is contradistinguished from reason. However, there is no harm, but much convenience, in beginning by defining and classifying, so as to leave on one side the physical and involuntary instincts — those things which may properly enough be called incidents of animal life, because there seems great difficulty in drawing a line between such motions and actions and those which subsist in vegetables. B. There does certainly appear to be this diffi- culty. I hardly see how any line can be drawn between the motions of the lowest species of animal, the mollusca for instance, and those found in plants. There is in both organized form, a system of ves- sels, growth by extension not by apposition, a cir- culation of fluids and secretion of solids from those fluids, or of one fluid from another. There is also production of seed, and from the seed continuation of the species. But it is not only convenient that we should define in order to leave on one side what we are not to discuss, that it may not confound our 20 INSTINCT. inquiry ; the definition and classification may also carry us on, some little way, in our argument with respect to the other class of Instincts, Instinct properly so called, the Mental Instincts ; at least, it seems to furnish us at the very outset with an analogy. A. I have a dread, at least a suspicion, of all analogies, and never more than when on the slip- pery heights of an obscure subject ; when we are as it were inter apices of a metaphysical argument, and feeling, perhaps groping, our way in the dark or among the clouds. I then regard analogy as a dangerous light, a treacherous ignis fatuus. B. It is even so, if we follow it beyond where we can see quite clear and find a firm footing. But all light is good, and the best way is not to despair, still less put out any glimmering we have, but rather to increase it by adding others, or make it available by using apt instruments. However, we are getting too metaphorical : only it is my com- fort that you began, and that I am led astray by one who (as you said in your inimitable letter to your Lancashire antagonist) is not one of " the eloquent people." But to return from where your poetical imagery led us — analogy may sometimes illustrate, and it may often lead to useful and strict inquiry, by suggesting matters for comparison and investigation. A. Then what comparison do you make between the two kinds of Instinct ? or rather, as the question is of analogy, how do you state a relation of the mental Instinct, which we shall call Instinct simply if you please, similar to or identical with some re- lation of physical Instinct ? B. As thus — the physical Instincts are inclepen- FACTS. 21 dent of will, or mind altogether, though they never are found except where animal life and conse- quently mind exists ; but yet mind may influence them. Just so the mental Instincts are indepen- dent of reason altogether, though they are found in union with it and reason may influence them. It is a question if they are ever found without rea- son ; for that depends on our solution of the vexata qucEStio, " Whether the lower animals have reason at all or no ?" Therefore, I will not say that here the analogy is complete, and will not affirm that, as physical Instinct is never found without animal life, so mental Instinct is never found without reason ; but we may safely say that in this other respect the analogy is perfect, namely, that where mental Instinct is found with reason it can act without reason, though reason may also interfere with it ; and in this respect, at least, reason seems to bear the same relation to mental Instinct which animal life bears to physical Instinct. We may go further, and add, that as in plants, where the mo- tions are without animal life, those motions are more perfect and more undisturbed, so if there be any animal wholly without reason, the operations of mental Instinct are the more regular and perfect ; and, in any animal whatever, they are so in pro* portion as reason is dormant or inactive. A. It may be as you say ; but this will not carry us, as you seem to be aware, far on our road. However, it is well enough to remark it ; for we thus gain perhaps a clearer and: more steady view of the relation between Reason and Instinct, always supposing that there is any warrant for treating the two as different : because you are aware that some have considered them as identical: I mean b3 22 INSTINCT. not merely by denying that there is any specific difference, any difference in kind, between our faculties and those of brutes — though this denial is of course involved in their doctrine— but by going a step further, and holding that what we call our Reason, and are so proud of, is merely a bundle of Instincts, as some have termed it — a more acute and perfect degree of Instinct. Smellie, in his entertaining work on the Philosophy of Natural History, holds this opinion. — That is a book, by the way, much less esteemed than it deserves, even as a collection of facts and anecdotes ; but I also think the honest printer (for such he was) had a good deal of the philosopher in him. I suppose, as the well-educated printers in the foreign university towns, and some of our own Oxford men, used to be critics and scholars, from the atmosphere of the place, so your Edinburgh printer, when well bred, is a metaphysician. JB. You are right as to Smellie at least, and I agree with you as to his book, though it is too long, and in parts loosely reasoned, as well as not over-accurate in his facts, according to what I have heard from naturalists. But he was a man of considerable merit ; and lived a good deal in the literary and scientific circles of Edinburgh. I •knew him, but slightly. He would have done much more had his habits been less convivial. But I rather fancy the somewhat pretending title of his book tended to make men disallow the merit which it unquestionably has. A. But what do you hold of the dogma in ques- tion, and of which he is perhaps the most round asserter ? B. I entirely deny it ; nor cb I conceive that FACTS. 23 any part oi the subject is more free from all doubt than this, unless indeed we come to the question of liberty and necessity, and resolve the whole into a mere dispute about terms. A. Liberty and necessity ! preserve us ! — I am taken by surprise. Why I had no idea that we could ever have got' among those heights and clouds already — " apart set on a hill retired," and reasoning on " free-will," like the gentry more acute than amiable, who held their metaphysical disputations there. S. Don't be alarmed — but the subjects in one single point do certainly touch. What I mean is this : if you say that, when a man reasons, one idea suggests another, and that he must follow the train, and can no more avoid drawing his conclusion, when he compares two ideas, than a bird can avoid building its nest in a particular fashion, or a bee can help making hexagonal cells, then you seem doubtless to liken Reason jvith Instinct. But this is true only on the supposition that a man's mind is mechanical, and that his faculties are placed be- yond his control. Now, suppose it to be admitted that I cannot avoid drawing a certain conclusion from premises in mathematical matters — as that the three angles of a figure are equal to two right angles, if that figure have those three angles only — I am under no such necessity in any question of moral or probable evidence ; and on a question like that different minds will differ, or the same mind at different times. Again, I am under no necessity — even if I admit that I have no choice on moral evidence — I am under no. necessity of exercising my volition in one given way, unless indeed you deny that I have ever any free-will at all. If so, and if 24 INSTINCT. you contend that, the same motives being presented to my volition in the same circumstances, I must needs choose the same course, you may also con- tend that, the same circumstances being presented to my judgment in the same frame of the feelings, I must needs draw the same conclusion ; and this may seem to make out an identity of Reason with Instinct : but this is the dispute of liberty and ne- cessity which every man's consciousness and hourly experience decides in favour of liberty, except in so far as it is a mere dispute about terms. But I really do think that, allowing the question to be disposed of either way, there is a specific difference between Reason and Instinct : for, even upon the principle of necessity, suppose the man and the bee to be equally under the entire control of the premises in reasoning, and the circumstances or motives in willing, whatever it is that each does, be it the necessary consequence of the circum- stances or not, is different in the two cases. Sup- pose that if the bee reasoned she would be under the necessity of drawing the same conclusion, and that if she exercised an election, she could not avoid choosing one course, and that it is the same with the man — it still is not only not proved that the bee does reason or choose, while we know that the man does, but the contrary seems proved. A. How so ? Were I to maintain the contrary I should deny that we have any such proof. How do you prove the negative proposition, that the bee does not reason and will ? B. Observe, I do not say we have the proof of the negative as clearly as we have of the affirmative. But, beginning with laying aside those actions of animals which are either ambiguous or are refer- FACTS. 25 able properly to reason, and which, almost all phi- losophers allow, show a glimmering of reason ; and confining ourselves to what are purely instinctive, as the bee forming a hexagon without knowing what it is, or why she forms it ; my proof of this not being reason, but something else, and some- thing not only differing from reason in degree but in kind, is from a comparison of the facts — an ex- amination of the phenomena in each case — in a word, from induction. I perceive a certain thing done by this insect, without any instruction, which we could not do without much instruction. I see her working most accurately without any expe- rience, in that which we could only be able to do by the expertness gathered from much experience. I see her doing certain things which are manifestly to produce an effect she can know nothing about, for example, making a cell and furnishing it with carpets and with liquid, fit to hold and to cherish safely a tender grub, she never having seen any grub, and knowing nothing of course about grubs, or that any grub is ever to come, or that any such use, perhaps any use at all, is ever to be made of the work she is about. Indeed, I see another in- sect, the solitary wasp, bring a given number of small grubs and deposit them in a hole which she has made, over her egg, just grubs enough to main- tain the worm that egg will produce when hatched — and yet this wasp never saw an egg produce a worm — nor ever saw a worm — nay, is to be dead long before the worm can be in existence — and moreover she never has in any way tasted or used these grubs, or used the hole she made, except for the prospective benefit of the unknown worm she is never to see. In all these cases, then, the ani- 26 INSTINCT. mal works positively without knowledge, and in the dark. She also works without designing any- thing, and yet she works to a certain denned and important purpose. Lastly, she works to a per- fection in her way, and yet she works without any teaching or experience. Now, in all this she differs entirely from man, who only works well, perhaps at all, after being taught — who works with know- ledge of what he is about — and who works, intend- ing and meaning, and, in a word, designing to do what he accomplishes. To all which may be added, though it is rather perhaps the consequence of this difference than a separate and substantive head of diversity, the animal works always uniformly and alike, and all his kind work alike — whereas no two men work alike, nor any man always, nay any two times alike. Of all this I cannot indeed be quite certain as I am of what passes within my own mind, because it is barely possible that the insect may have some plan or notion in her head im- planted as the intelligent faculties are : all I know is the extreme improbability of it being so ; and that I see facts, as her necessary ignorance of the existence and nature of her worm, and her working without experience, and I know that if I did the same things I should be acting without having learnt mathematics, and should be planning in ignorance of unborn issue ; and I therefore draw my inference accordingly as to her proceedings. A. Come, come, Master B., I begin to surround you and drive you from your original position, maintained both now and last summer, about the impossibility of defining. Have you not as nearly as possible been furnishing a definition ? At least, are not the materials of definition brought together FACTS. 21 which you deprecated, and would have us reserve to the last ? B. Patience, good man — patience ! "What is this to what you have gone through? l£ancy yourself once more in the House of Commons, on the Treasury bench, listening to A. God forbid! B. Or suppose yourself again in Downing Street, with Drummond announcing a succession of seven deputations or of seventeen suitors. A. The bare possibility of it drives me wild. Why, to convert you to the most absurd doctrine I could fancy — to make you swallow all the Zoonomia whole, and believe that men derive their love of waving lines and admiration of finely- moulded forms from the habit of the infant in handling his mother's bosom, or even to drive you into a belief that the world was made by chance — would be an easy task compared to the persuading any one suitor at any one of the offices that you had any difficulty in giving him all he asks, or convincing any one of those seven deputations that there exists in the world another body but itself. B. Or to convince any one man, who ever asked any one job to be done for him, that he had any one motive in his mind but the public good, to which he was sacrificing his private interest. I remember M. [Melbourne] once drolly observ- ing, when I said no man could tell how base men are till he came into office, " On the contrary, I never before had such an opinion of human virtue ; for I now find that no man ever drops the least hint of any motive but disinterestedness and self- denial — and all idea of gain, or advantage, is the only thing that none seem ever to dream of." But 28 INSTINCT. iiow compose yourself to patience and discussion — take an extra pinch of snuff — walk about for five minutes, a distance of five yards and back, with your hands in your breeches' pockets, and then re- turn to the question with the same calmness with which you would have listened to a man abusing you by the hour in Parliament, or with which you looked an hour ago, in the Castle farm, at the beast you had bred, and which by your complacent aspect I saw you had sold pretty well. A. But, indeed, I sometimes can't help fancying that it may be as well to take our observations upon Instinct from the operations and habits of such large animals as him you speak of — at least, not from insects ; because it is possible that if we could see as accurately all the detail of the latter as we do of the former, much of the marvellous might disappear, and we might be as well able to account for their proceedings, which now seem to us so unintelligible, as we are to account for those of the greater animals, which are clumsy and cumbrous enough, and rather appear to proceed from an obscure glimmering of reason than from an inexplicable power guiding them unconsciously to work with the perfection which we ascribe to the bee. In a word, might not the cells be found to have as many imperfections, as great deviations from the true form, as any of the ox's operations have from perfect exactness, if either the bee were as large as the ox, or our senses as acute as the bee's ? Has she not as great aberrations from the exact pattern in proportion to her own size and to the instruments, her feet and feelers, which she works with ? I throw this out as a matter very iit 'to be settled in the outset, in order that our FACTS. 29 own reasoning may not proceed upon gratuitous assumption. B. For the sake of ascertaining how far the working is as perfect as it appears, I admit the importance of your observation ; but for nothing more. I deny that it affects the body of the argument at all ; because that depends in no degree upon the perfection of the work. Thus the pro- ceedings of the solitary wasp are just as good for my purpose as those of the bee. Nay, the in- stinctive operations of the greater animals furnish exactly the same materials for reasoning, though they may not be so striking. However, to the point of your comparison — you must keep in mind that we have applied the powers of the microscope to the operations of the bee. Now, without going to an instrument of the power of Torre's, which magnified the linear dimensions between 2000 and 3000 times, and consequently the surface above 6,000,000 of times, take the much more ordinary power of 400, which magnifies the surface 160,000- fold — nay, if you take a microscope of only a 90-times magnifying power, you will see the work of the bee in a straight line, exactly as you do that of a man with the naked eye. But, I need hardly add that, if you only saw it a quarter as well, or with a glass that magnified 20 times, it would be enough : for then you would examine it as you do the beaver's with your naked eye. But, further, all the difficulty you suggest proceeds upon a fallacy. The lines may not be exactly even which the bee forms ; the surfaces may have inequalities to the bee's eye though to our sight they seem plane ; and the angles, instead of being pointed, may be blunt or roundish: but the pro- 30 INSTINCT. portions are the same ; the equality of the sides is maintained, and the angles are of the same size ; that is, the inclination of the planes is just— -in other words, all the inequalities don't affect the proportions of the parts ; for they are common to each thing compared with another ; the axis run- ning through the inequalities (to speak more rigorously) is in the true direction, and the junc- tion of the two axes forms the angle of 60° as accurately as if there were no inequalities. Now, then, the bee places a plane in such a position, whatever be the roughness of its surface, that its inclination to another plane is the true one required. A. I suppose it is so ; but, at any rate, the solitary wasp carrying the grubs in proper number and placing them in the hole over the egg, or the bee placing her egg in the liquor at the bottom of the cell, and making that cell of the length to which the worm when hatched will grow — she having never seen either the worm or the chrysalis — is sufficient for our purpose. B. Not to mention the operations of the worm itself in spinning the cocoon, and making it pre- cisely the size required to line or carpet the cell when expanded and applied to it — nay, the mo- tions of the chick in the egg, which always begins at the same place, and moves itself on in the same direction, chipping away till it effects its own liberation — all of which must be prior to ex- perience, and without the possibility of teaching. A. You desired me last summer to examine, with a view to the same point, the ducklings hatched under a hen, and then taking the water, without the possibility of her teaching. They FACTS. 31 have the form, web-feet, &c, which enables them to swim, and which a ehicken has not. Their manner of getting into the water I cannot say I well ascertained ; but it is certain enough that the hen's proper brood would not have got in, and probably she would have succeeded in preventing them, though she might not be able to keep the ducklings out. B. However, a more decisive case occurred to me afterwards : that of chickens hatched in the Egyptian ovens. I have lately seen an intelligent Bey and his aide-de-camp, who gave me the whole process ; and, as was to be expected, there is not the slightest difference between the conduct and motions, and habits generally, of these chickens, and of such as are hatched and brought up by hens. This fact, as well as the working of the chrysalis in spinning the cocoon, and of the chick in chipping with its bill-scale, renders it quite un- necessary to inquire whether or not the honey-bee or social wasp work by instruction from other bees or wasps. That, however, appears to be impos- sible, when we consider that as many as 30,000 young insects come from one nest, to teach whom there are not old ones anything like enough ; and to teach whom in a few hours, or even days, to work as exactly as themselves seems wholly im- possible. The observation of cases where such teaching is impossible, as in the chrysalis and un- hatched chicken, at once removes all doubt, and precludes the possibility of supposing thai; the wasp's and the bee's architecture can be traditional, or handed down by teaching, from the first insects of the species that were created. Henceforward, therefore, we must assume as part of the fact that 32 INSTINCT. the cells of the bee are made without any instruc- tion or any experience, and are as perfect at first as they ever are ; which, by the way, explains another peculiarity of instinct — that it never im- proves in the progress of time. The bee, 6000 years ago, made its cells as accurately, and the wasp its paper as perfectly, as they now do. A. Let us advert to one thing more, and, hav- ing settled it, the way may at least be said to be cleared for the argument, perhaps somewhat of progress even to be made in the inquiry. You have been speaking of Instincts in the plural ; of course you do not mean to be taken literally, as admitting more kinds of mental Instinct than one. JB. Certainly not ; any more than when speak- ing of the mental faculties I admit of more minds than one, or more parts than one of a single mind. This last form of speech has been so used, or rather abused, especially by the philosophers of the Scottish school, accurate and strict as they for the most part are, that they seem to treat the mind as divided into compartments, and to represent its faculties as so many members, like the parts of the body. But it is one thing or being perceiving, comparing, recollecting — not a being of parts, whereof perception is one, reasoning another, and recollection a third ; so Instinct is one and indi- visible, whatever we may hold it to be in its nature, or from whatever origin we may derive it. This thing, or being, is variously applied, and operates variously. There are not different In- stincts, as of building, of collecting food for future worms, of emigrating to better climates — but one Instinct, which is variously employed or directed. I agree with you, however, that we have now done PACTS. 33 something more than merely clearing away the ground. We have taken a first step, or, if you will, laid a foundation. We have ascertained the peculiar or distinctive quality of Instinct, and that which distinguishes it from Reason. It acts with- out teaching, either from others, that is, instruction, or from the animal itself, that is, experience. This is generally given as the definition or descrip- tion of Instinct. But we have added another peculiarity, which seems also a necessary part of the description — it acts without knowledge of con- sequences — it acts blindly, and accomplishes a purpose of which the animal is ignorant. A. I pause here and doubt of this addition. I perfectly admit the fact that it produces an effect, manifestly the object of its operation, and yet without knowing it, consequently without intend- ing it or designing it. But there seems reason to think that it always intends to produce some one effect, and does produce it — that it has some one purpose, and accomplishes it, and so designs some- thing which it does. Thus animals are impelled by hunger to eat ; their eating produces chyle, blood, and all that is secreted from the blood ; yet they had no design to promote their own growth and preserve their own life. At least they ate long before they had any such design or any know- ledge that such would be the consequence of gratifying hunger. So of continuing their species. May not the solitary wasp, for instance, have its organs and its senses so constructed as to receive an immediate gratification from collecting and burying grubs? If so, her knowledge extended to one, the first, event, and she had the design in view of producing this eYent ; though wholly 34 INSTINCT. ignorant of any subsequent event. The desire of the first event, the fact of that event being a gratification to the insect, was the means taken by the Creator of the insect for making her do that which was to produce the important consequence, forming the real object in view, though concealed from the animal. Thus we may conceive that the insect is endowed with an appetite for carrying grubs, and that this is so adjusted in point of in- tensity as to be satiated when just so many grubs are transported as will feed the next season's worm, which is endowed with the desire to eat these grubs, rejected as food by the parent insect. So the wasp's senses may make the flavour, or the smell (for that seems all she enjoys), of a living caterpillar more grateful than of a dead one ; and hence she takes those that will keep sweet till her own grub is hatched. B. I do not deny the possibility of all this ; although there seems something gratuitous in it, and we possibly never can know the truth by any observations or experiments. I shall presently show why I do not think it would entitle us to erase this ignorance of what you would call the second event, or the object of the secondary design, from our list of the characteristics of Instinct. But in the meantime I will mention what occurs to me on your objection in point of fact. The instant that a solitary wasp is hatched, or a bee can fly, away they go to the spot where the caterpillars or the wax-yielding substances are to be found. What guides them through the air to things they cannot descry or do not know the use of? A. It costs me no more to suppose that there is some smell or other sensation to guide them— some FACTS. 35 odour, for example, which penetrates the air, and being grateful to them makes them desire to ap- proach the odoriferous body. Thus the bee smells the nectary of flowers ; she flies to them, she sips, and the wax is secreted in her stomach. I grant you that I have more difficulty with her operation in using it. B. You clearly have ; for what should be the special gratification of that? We are admitting that she has no kind of knowledge that the cell is to be used in hatching and rearing the brood, any more than that an hexagonal figure, with a certain inclination of its rhomboidal bottom, is to enable her and her associates to employ the space and the wax in the way of all others most economical of room and work and materials ; and so as just to accommodate the size of the unknown and unseen worm, chrysalis, or young bee, and no more — and also to suit its form. A. I think I could suppose also in this case that her desire of action — her love of motion — is grati- fied by the operation, and is satiated by continuing that motion to a certain extent, where she stops. B. But allowing your right to make all these suppositions equally gratuitous, one after another, and to extend them as the argument proceeds, and to relieve the pressure as the fact pinches — see what it is that you must assume. The comb is constructed thus. Wax-making bees bring a small mass of this material and place it vertically to the plane from which the comb is to hang down. Then other bees begin to excavate, one on one side, another on the other, and they work with such perfect nicety, as never to penetrate through the thin layer of wax; also so equally that the 36 INSTINCT. plate is of equal thickness all throughout, its sur- faces being parallel. Ypu must, therefore, sup- pose some repugnance at once to a plate ever so little thicker, and to one ever so little thinner than the plate's given thickness. Indeed, this supposi- tion, which some naturalists have made, is wholly unsatisfactory, and shows no accurate regard to the facts any more than their notion (a most crude one) that the hexagon cells arise from so many cylinders pressing on each other. The supposed instinct not to perforate wax, but to draw back when they come to a given thickness, is inconsistent with the fact ; for the original plate they work on is uneven and of different thicknesses on both sides, and there is no bee in the world that ever made cylindrical cells. Huber has distinctly shown, from having observed them at their work, that they make them in quite another way ; nor indeed, if they did, could any pressure ever produce hexagons, and far less rhora- boidal plates. The wax-worker's bringing plates of a given thickness is also wholly incapable of accounting for the angles, that is, the inclination of the plates — for supposing the bee to make a groove (as she does), and suppose she has some means of bisecting its arc by two Chords, this only, with the thickness of the cake, would determine the depth of the rhomboid, and that can be easily shown not to be the rhomboid actually made. She therefore makes angles wholly independent of the thickness, not to mention that were we to admit that the cake's thickness governs the whole, we do not solve the problem ; the difficulty is only re- moved a step ; for then how is that exact thickness obtained ? But this will not do even to that ex- tent ; a great deal more is done by the bee, and a FACTS. 37 great deal more must be supposed to make it con- ceivable that she has any immediate or primary intention. She works so that the rhomboidal plate may have one particular diameter and no other, and always the same length, and that its four angles may be always the same, the opposite ones equal to each other, but each two of different quantity from the other two ; and then she inclines the plates at given angles to one another. Why is there such a gratification to the bee in a straight line — in a straight line at right angles to a plane — in rhom- boids — in rhomboids with certain angles — any more than in lines or planes inclining at other angles to one another ? Why is the bee, after working for half a quarter of a line in one direction, to go on, and not take delight in a change of direction ? If she goes on, why is she to be pleased with stopping at one particular point ? Nay, why is each bee to take delight in its own little part of the combined operation ? Why is each to derive pleasure from doing exactly as much as is wanted, and in the direction wanted, in order that when added to what others have before done, and increased by wha* others are afterwards to do, a given effect, wholly unknown to her and to all the rest, her coadjutors, may be produced ? A. It certainly is difficult to say. I can barely imagine the different bees so formed that some in- explicable gratification may be the consequence of moving in one line, and making one angle, and that any other line or angle whatever may be disagree- able to them. The concert in the operation of animals seems to increase this difficulty much, always supposing there is real concert without any arrangement, communication, or knowledge. No c 38 INSTINCT. man ever acted so as to make his operations chime in with another's, unless he either had previous concert with that other, or both acted under a com- mon superior, and obeyed his direction : and then the joint operation was that of this superior. But suppose a man were compelled by some feeling he could not account for, and did not at all understand, to go at a given time, to a certain place, and with such speed as to arrive there at a given moment, and were to find another just arrived there, who came to meet him without the former previously knowing of this, — we should have a case similar to that of animals acting in concert, supposing them to do so. There is, however, some doubt of this as to the bees ; for Huber has said that they all act in succession rather than co-operate contempora- neously. B. I really can see no difference that this makes in the argument as to concert. One bee brings wax and does not sculpture ; another sculptures and does not bring wax : but the wax-worker brings just as much as the sculpturing bee wants, and at the very time she wants it ; also, one works on the face, and another on the back of the same rhomboidal plate ; and all so work as never to interfere with or jostle one another, which is the perfection of concert, and can only among men be effected by discipline, which refers the whole of the different purposes to one superintendent, and makes his unity of design the guiding rule and impulse, because concert among the different agents is otherwise unattainable. But I own I can see no greater difficulty thrown in our way by concert than by blind agency — supposing it blind as to both the events, and not merely blind as to the secondary consequence — and your suppo- FACTS. 39 sition of a first event known and designed, the secondary being hidden from the animal, would, I think, account for a case of concert, as much as for any other operation ; for your hypothesis of sensa- tions and impulses would apply to concert. You might say that each bee was induced by the grati- fication of doing a certain thing, to take a certain line at such a time ; that what it did should answer to what some other bee was by the like means in- duced to do at the same time. I see no difference in the two applications of this hypothesis. A. I rather think the time makes some difference ; at least in rendering an addition to the hypothesis necessary. For though the gratification of bring- ing the caterpillars to its nest will account for the solitary wasp doing what is also to serve the pur- pose of feeding its young next season, something more is required than this motive to make one bee act in concert with another ; it is necessary that there should be a gratification, not only in doing the thing required, but in doing it at the very mo- ment required ; so that both bees must be supposed to feel at the very same instant of time the desire of the gratification in question, and yet without any concert or communication. I hardly see how my supposition of sensations and pleasures or pains will explain this. B. I all along have seen the greatest difficulty in your explanation ; but does this consideration of time increase it materially ? — or rather, is it not in all cases part of the riddle which instinctive opera- tions present to us ? Thus the solitary wasp acts, that is, according to your hypothesis, feels the given sensation or derives the supposed gratification at such precise time that her acting upon it will suit c2 40 INSTINCT, the time required for the birth and growth of the worm. The bird breeds, — but before laying- her eggs, and without any knowledge when she is to lay them, makes her nest, and it is ready at the very time required. Therefore she feels the desire of nest-making at the proper moment. I will admit, however, that there is something still more extraordinary in two separate and independent in- sects feeling the same impulse at the same moment ; and the difficulty is incalculably augmented, if twenty or thirty insects all have the impulse sepa- rately, but all at once, so as to act together. In- deed, I cannot help regarding your solution as not only a gratuitous hypothesis, for that it must needs be from the nature of the thing, but one hardly conceivable, and in truth as difficult to suppose possible as any other thing which we can fancy in order to explain the phenomenon—for instance, some invisible power or influence acting upon the animal, or upon the different animals at once. This is not at all more gratuitous, and it more easily explains the phenomenon. A. Consider if there is really any such essential difference between the case of instinct which we have been considering, and any of the best known operations of men, as well as animals, where we are not wont to speak of instinct at all. Thus men eat from hunger, which they intend to satisfy ; but the consequential effect, not intended, is clryli- fication, sanguification, secretion, and growth or sustentation of the body, as well as the effect in- tended, and immediately produced, of satisfying hunger. The mother eats things which satisfy her appetite, and that is all she cares for; but those things also produce milk, which nourishes PACTS. 41 her infant, and that she never thought of. The time is also suited by the feeling. The hunger gives the supply when the system wants it ; the eating produces the milk when the infant requires it. How does this differ from the other case ? JB. Much every way. The difference is wide and marked. In the cases you put, the mental in- stinct is confined to produce the effect intended ; and having produced it, the mind stops there and does nothing more. The powers of matter, its physical qualities, set in motion, do the rest, of course beyond our direct control, and unaided by us as unknown to us. But in the case of Instinct the mind perforins both parts — both the things which it knows and intends, and the thing which it neither knows nor intends. The mother eats — nature produces the milk without the least action of hers. But the bee not only gratifies herself (if that is the cause of her architecture) by the struc- ture of the cell, but by her art, by her work, she does the other thing also, that of providing a lodg- ing for her young. It is as if the mother in your supposed case were both to eat intentionally for satisfying her hunger, and at the same time, with- out knowing or intending it, were to make milk by some process of internal churning. It is as if in eating we at once chewed and swallowed, and also with our tongue or teeth or fingers made chyme, and then chyle, and then blood. It is as if the animal in pairing both gratified his sexual pas- sion and voluntarily made the young by some pro- cess of manipulation, though without knowing what he was about, or intending to do it. A. You must here distinguish a little, or rather you must take into your account a point of resem- 42 INSTINCT. blance which you are passing over. How can any- one even acting with design affect matter in fashion- ing it or moulding it, except by availing himself of the powers, mechanical or chemical, belonging to matter ? If I distil, it is by availing myself of the process of fermentation and of evaporation, and of condensation. If I sow and reap, it is by availing myself of the prolific powers of heat and moisture in the process of vegetation. So even in processes where I seem to do more and nature to do less ; if I build, or carve, or weave, it is by availing myself of the qualities of cohesion and gravitation, and of the powers of the wedge in hewing, or of friction in polishing. Do not the animals who eat, the mo- thers who give suck after eating and thereby secret- ing milk, in like manner do part themselves, and as to the rest avail themselves of the powers of nature in chylification, sanguification, and secretion ? You perceive how much more nearly akin the cases are than you have stated. B. I am well aware of it ; indeed, we are now coming nearly into the controversy about produc- tive labour, which you and I have often amused ourselves with as political economists ; when I have always held that it was a far less easy thing than those who discussed the metaphysical parts of that science supposed, to draw the line between produc- tive and unproductive labour, either by including manufactures or only commerce in the latter — and agriculture alone or with manufactures in the for- mer, the productive class. Be it so : I am content, if there be as marked a distinction here as between the labour which produces or moulds matter into a new substance, and that which only exchanges one thing for another ; or defends the community, or FACTS. 43 administers justice among its members. But, in truth, we have, in our present argument, a specific difference, admitting all that you have urged, as to the affections and properties of matter being used by the animal in both processes. The great and broad difference is this. In the one case, as in the wasp carrying the caterpillar to its nest, which she does and means to do, or, if you will, gratifying her senses with the carrying, whatever instruments she works with, she does the thing knowingly and intentionally ; she does it by means of gravitation and cohesion, but still it is she, her action, her will, her mind that does it. In the other case, that of leaving the caterpillar in the nest for months, she has done ; she quits the work ; nothing she does is at all conducive to the operation then performed by nature ; but what she did was all that could be done excepting by nature. So the mother eats the galactigenous matter, and then has done ; nature does all the rest. But there is this material dif- ference in what the bee or the wasp does, — that she finishes the whole operation voluntarily ; it is as if the mother were not only to become gravid, but to prepare the child's clothes and habitation herself, and yet to do this without knowing what she was about, and while she intended to do, and thought she was only doing, some perfectly different thing. If, indeed, you put the case of a person ploughing and sowing for the purpose of strengthening his limbs or amusing himself, and not meaning any- thing to grow, and also ignorant that anything will grow, and yet choosing the seed which will grow, and sowing it at the right time to make it grow — then you merely put the case of Instinct in other words ; and the one thing will be as difficult to 44 INSTINCT. explain as the other. And if one man should, by mere blind chance, do this the first time, and Some other man, equally ignorant of what the use of thrashed wheat was, should reap and thrash it, and garner it away — and if all men were to do so in two bodies, equally ignorant of what they were about, and yet both chiming in with each other in their operations, and both agreeing with the nature of things, then we should say this is the self-same case with Instinct — but we should add that this could not happen without some overruling power not only giving those men the desire to stretch their limbs, but guiding them immediately how to do it — for there, as here, two designs and only one designer appears, and therefore some non-apparent contriver must exist and work. We may again put it thus — When a man brews or tills, he does something himself, and leaves the rest to the powers of nature. So when a mother eats or drinks to gratify hunger or thirst, she has done ; nature does the rest, namely, supports her body and secretes the milk for her young. But the bee or the wasp does the whole. They use the powers of matter, indeed, as the farmer and brewer do, and as the mother does, in the operation itself performed by them, namely, breaking the ground, throwing the seed, steeping the grain, eating the victuals — but the insects finish the operation, and leave nothing to be done. The solitary wasp has completed a cell and provided food ; the young have only to eat it. The bee has completed a cell with food like- wise. Neither mind nor matter on the part of either insect has anything more to do ; the thing they intended and knew all about is done, and in doing that thing they did something else neither FACTS. 45 known to nor intended by them. They only used the powers of matter in doing the thing they in- tended. They did not leave any natural powers to do the other thing not intended by them ; but they did it also, though unintentionally. Man does what he intended, but he does nothing more — nature does the rest, both where he intended it, as. in ploughing or brewing, and where he did not, as after eating to satisfy his hunger. In the bee it is like a whole manufacture completed by the animal, though unintentionally ; as if a man were to make a skein of fine lace while he only meant to amuse himself with twirling the bobbins, or playing with his fingers among the flax or the threads. A. I certainly think we do get to something like a specific difference. But compare the work of the insect with certain chemical processes. If you mix, or if any natural process mixes, certain salts, and the liquor is left to evaporate, there are formed crystals, say hexagons, as accurately as the bee forms her cells. Also certain bodies move in lines which have properties similar to the angles in the comb, as a heavy body falling through the shortest of all lines. There is no doubt a difference here, and a marked one ; yet it is as well to consider it. B. Doubtless there is a difference, and the greatest possible. These forms are assumed, and these motions performed: for instance, a stone falling to the ground in the shortest line, or the planets, all arranged respecting their masses, the direction of their motions, and the inclinations of the planes they move in, so as, according to La- place's beautiful theorem, to preserve the system of the universe steady, by affixing limits, maxima and minima, between which the irregularities os- c3 46 INSTINCT. cillate ; all these things are the direct and unin- terrupted agency of the property which the Deity has impressed on matter at its creation ; perhaps, of the laws which His power perpetually main- tains. But they are wholly unconnected with any animal workmanship of any kind ; they have no •subordinate mind to guide them ; nor can any act of ours, or of any animal, affect them. On the contrary, in all our operations we must conform to them. A. Unquestionably it is so ; and this is the dis- tinction, and the broad one. But then it follows from the preceding deductions, that we must con- sider in the works of Instinct the animal acting as an agent, though ignorantly and unintentionally, — a tool or instrument blindly used to do a certain thing without its own knowledge or design ; and the tool being a living thing, the mind is the in- strument. In the case of matter, the matter is the instrument blindly serving the purpose by obeying the physical law. In our case the mind is the in- strument, and obeys the mental law as perfectly and as blindly. B. There is one thing, however, always to be considered. We have hitherto been viewing In- stinct alone, and arguing as if animals always acted by it, and never otherwise. Now this is quite impossible, at least in the sense in which we have taken the word Instinct. There may be some doubt if we are right in so limiting the term, though I have a very clear opinion that we are. Paley and all or almost all others define Instinct to be a disposition or acting prior to experience, and independent of instruction. But among other objections, there is this one to the definition, that FACTS. 47 it amounts to saying " an acting without know- ledge," and yet does not say it. There may be no experience, and yet no Instinct, e. g., we may act on the information of others — but then what shall be said of the information given by reasoning ; that is, by our inferences from our own thoughts ? This is plainly not instruction. Is it experience ? If so, the definition seems only to say, that Instinct is anything that is not reason, in other words, that Instinct is Instinct. But I apprehend, when we speak of instinctive operations we always have an eye to some end which is blindly served by the act — some act done by the animal, in which he does what he does not mean, and in doing which he is a blind instrument. A. How is it when we speak of instinctive de- sires ? B. I should say we then mean something differ- ent from merely animal or natural desires, for that would make every thing instinctive. We mean desires which are subservient to some purpose to- wards which they move: some end beyond the doing the act seems always involved in our notion of Instinct. We do not call mere moving, yawn- ing, stretching, instinctive ; and when we speak of sucking or eating, and the desire or power to suck or eat, as instinctive, it is surely with a regard to the subserviency of those operations to support life that we so term them. If they did nothing for our frame, we might call them natural, hardly instinctive. A. But be this as it may, no one can doubt that animals, if we allow them to have these Instincts, and to act for ends unknown to themselves, have other actions of a kind resembling our own, and 48 INSTINCT, quite distinguishable from what we have been calling Instincts ; therefore it signifies little whether or not we are right in giving the name to actions accomplishing undesigned and unknown purposes, provided we keep that definition in view. These animals also have other actions, where they both know and intend and accomplish their definite object. JB. Undoubtedly, they liave many such in which their operations of mind and body cannot be dis- tinguished from our own. Now whether these are under the guidance of faculties like ours ; whether they have reason ; whether they have faculties differing from our own in kind, or only in degree — we need not at present stop to inquire. It is quite enough for us that they have two kinds of operations, one which we agree to call Instinctive, distinguished by the ignorance of the object and want of intention ; the other both knowingly and intentionally done : so man, acting almost always rationally, also acts in some rare cases uninten- tionally — chiefly in early infancy. A. There may be instinctive acts with know- ledge, and there may be acts not instinctive with- out knowledge. Does not this break in upon the definition which excludes knowledge as well as design ? Many parts of human conduct seem to be guided by Instinct, and yet with knowledge. JB. This would no doubt overturn the definition, provided it be clear that "knowledge" and the u presence of knowledge" are here used in the same sense as in that definition. But we must make a distinction. There is a knowledge of some end or object in view, and a knowledge of the means whereby that end or object is to be attained ; FACTS. 49 in other words, of the mode of operating — of the process. There is also a distinction to be taken between instinctive desires and instinctive opera- tions. The objection you have now made refers to the former — to desires ; the latter, the operations, are chiefly referable to the great question respect- ing the controlling mind, or actual interposition of the Deity, to which we are approaching ; but it also refers, in some measure, to the objection which you raise. Knowledge of consequence comes within the description of object or end; and if there be no intention to attain an end actually pursued, there can be no knowledge of it ; and conversely, if there be no knowledge of it, there can be no intention to attain it. Take any in- stance of what you call human instinct, as hunger, or the sexual passion — these are desires, and their gratification may be pursued without any know- ledge of, and consequently without any view to, the consequences of making chyle and blood to support the individual, or offspring to continue the race. As far as the mere gratification of the desire or supplying of the want goes, we may be said both to know what we are doing and to intend or mean to do it. We are attracted by our senses, that is, by the effect of our senses on our minds, to do certain things ; and this is called instinctive acting, — I apprehend incorrectly. It is natural desire, but why instinctive? When we say In- stinct, do we not mean something beyond this ? Desires may be subservient to Instincts ; but are they all we mean by Instinct ? They may lead to the attainment of a certain end ; they may be the way in which Instincts operate: but are they themselves Instincts ? If two foods are presented 50 INSTINCT. to an animal, a man for example, who knows nothing of either ; and he is impelled, without knowing why, to take the one and reject the other, and the one is wholesome and the other a poison ; we at once call this the operation of instinct, which some define to be knowledge without in- struction or experience, but which I have wished rather to call mental action without knowledge, or at least independent of knowledge. So in Galen's beautiful experiment on the kid just born, having been taken out of the mother, and which of course had never sucked, when, upon many shallow pans with different liquids being placed near it, the animal preferred at once the pan containing goat's milk. If the reason for the preference is some greater gratification of the senses, or that the one food- is pleasing, for instance, in smell fragrant, and the other offensive, this may be the mode taken by nature to make Instinct operate according to your former hypothesis, which we have been discussing at large ; and we certainly cannot tell that such may not, in all cases, be the mode taken by nature for working to the same end. It seems, however, eminently unlikely that the whole opera- tions of bees, for example, should be owing to the pleasure their senses receive from one particular form and proportion alone, and a repugnance to all others, because of their being disagreeable to those senses. But do we not, in all cases, mean, by using the word Instinct, to point out the unknown connexion between the thing done and something else of which the animal — the agent — is not aware ? I grant you that we speak of Instinct of hunger and Instinct of sex ; but is not this only a way of saying, and do we not mean, merely desire of FACTS. 51 food or sex, the gratification of which is a natural propensity, and known and felt by us to be such ? Thus it is an Instinct which makes animals pro- pagate their kind while they merely mean to gratify their passions, and which enables them to prepare a nest, and have it quite ready at the very time they are to want it for laying their eggs in. "We always seem to have the motive, the end, and the blind instrumentality in our view when we speak correctly of Instinct. I may intend to do a thing, and know both the object in view and that portion of the operation or process which depends on me— e. g., to eat for the purpose of making chyle. My ignorance of that process, with which I have nothing to do, would not make the operation of mine be called an Instinct. Indeed, even if I eat to satisfy hunger, without any design of sup- porting the system, this act is not instinctive, except in so far as doing and meaning one thing, I am. doing another thing ignorantly and uninten- tionally. A. I think we have got as far as we can in these preliminary discussions and observations of Facts, and may now proceed to Theorize and infer. B. However, we are come, or coming, to a part of the subject where we should be among our books ; for we shall now have to look at them in proceeding further. At least, it is as well we should observe what has been held on this matter by philosophers. So we had better adjourn for the present; and resume our conversation in the library, if indeed you, who are accustomed to Althorp and Spencer House, can condescend to call anything in this part of the world by that 52 INSTINCT. name. We commonly, from feeling this modesty, name it the Book-room. A. And I dare swear, also from your love of the Saxon idiom. B. Possibly ; though I would that our good old English never suffered more havoc than by calling Book-rooms Libraries. I expect to outlive it, as Serjeant Maynard said he had nearly done the law, with the lawyers. EOOK OR DIALOGUE II. INSTINCT.— (Theory.) Having thus far carried on our discussion in the open air, we removed, towards the afternoon, to the library — " cum satis ambulatum videretur, turn in bibliotheca assedimus"* — and there con- veniently pursued the subject, which greatly inter- ested us both. J9. The manifest difference between Instinct and Season which we have been observing, and its regular and constant action, always the same, and never improved, but never different, indeed ap- parently incapable of improvement, was probably the consideration which induced Descartes to consider animals as machines. A. I am aware that this is commonly said of him. But I know not how that great man could really have held so untenable a position. Did he really consider them as mechanical contrivances — as mere physical substances, without anything answering to what we call Mind ? B. He is always so represented ; but when you examine his own statement closely, you really find that this is an exaggeration, and that his doctrine * " When we thought we had walked long enough, we took our seats in the library." — Cic. de Div. ii. 54 INSTINCT. differs not very much from that commonly received, As has oftentimes happened to others, his senti- ments are rather taken from the statement of them by those who were controverting them, than from his own words. A. Where are they to be found ? JB. Look here — you have them in the short treatise on Method, the introduction to his work on Dioptrics and Meteors. He dwells on brutes having no gift of speech, which yet requires very little reason, he says ; and therefore he concludes not that they are less rational than man, " sed plane esse rationis expertia." * Thus far no doubt can exist ; he only gives a very common opinion on the subject, though an opinion controverted by some, as I shall hereafter ask you to discuss : but it forms a head distinct from our present inquiry. But a little way further on he proceeds to illus- trate his position in a manner which has given rise to the notion in question. " They do many things even better than ourselves," he says, "but this does not prove them to be endowed with reason, for this would prove them to have more reason than we have, and that they should excel us in all other things also — but it rather proves them to be void of reason, and that nature acts in them ac- cording to the disposition of their members, as we see a clock, which is only composed of wheels and * De Methodo, 36. — " Istud autem non tantum indicat bruta minore vi pollere quam homines, sed ilia plane esse rationis expertia. Videmus enim exigua admodum opus esse ad loquendum." (Of Method, 36.—" But that not only indicates that brutes have less power than men ; it also proves them to be void of reason. For we see that very little reason is required to enable men to speak.") THEORY. 55 weights, can measure time better than we can with all our skill." He goes on to show that the in- terests of virtue are greatly injured by the belief, not that brutes have souls, but that they have souls like our own — " brutorum animam ejusdem esse cum nostra naturae," — and that therefore we have nothing more to hope or fear in a future state than flies or ants ; whereas he had shown our souls to be by their nature independent of the body, and there- fore not mortal like and with it. All this you perceive is anything rather than the doctrine that brutes are mere machines. A. But where do you find the adversary's re- presentation of it which you mentioned ? B. Here, in this other and very curious volume, containing his Correspondence with many learned persons, and some less learned, as Christina, Queen of Sweden, and our Princess Elizabeth, the Elec- tress Palatine and stock of our present Royal family, to whom he writes, among other letters, one on her brother Charles the First's execution — which, to console her, he praises as more glorious than an ordinary death — " pulchrior, felicior, et dulcior."* A. Does the Princess enter on the question of animals ? B. No ; she seems to have been ailing with fever, and having been light-headed, she applies to the philosopher to explain to her how in the night she felt an irresistible desire to make verses : this he courteously explains (after saying it reminded him of a similar anecdote related by Plato, of Socrates), that it is owing to the agitation of the animal spirits, which in weak brains produces * " Finer, happier, sweeter." — Epist. Pars I., Ep. xxvii. 56 INSTINCT. madness, but in strong ones only a genial warmth, leading to poesy, and thereupon he holds her Serene Highness's case to be " ingenii solidioris et sublimioris indicium."* A. Upon my word, I shall begin to think a person who could thus theorize as well as flatter about animal spirits and Serene Highnesses, was capable of shutting his eyes to the most ordinary facts, and believing brutes to be machines. JB. Do not undervalue this great man : he is the true author of all the modern discoveries in mathe- matics. He made the greatest step that ever man made since the discovery of algebra, which is lost in the obscurity of remote ages : I mean his appli- cation of algebra to geometry, the source of all that is most valuable and sublime in the stricter sciences and in natural philosophy. But assuredly his physical and psychological speculations are much less happy ; although it was no mean fame to be the author of a treatise, the answer to which was the first work ever composed by man — Newton's Principia. But I was coming to the controversy on Instinct. An ingenious clergyman of Cam- bridge, Henry More, objected to the doctrine of the great philosopher, as laid down in that treatise to which we have been referring, on Method ; and he began by describing the doctrine as denying sense and life to brutes. He speaks of Descai tes's genius, " chalybis instar rigidum et crudele, quod uno quasi ictu omnium ferme animantium genus vita ausit sensuque spoliare in marmora atque machinas vertendo."t This he repeats in various * " The proof of a more solid and more lofty under- standing'." f " Bigid and heartless like steel, which, as by a single THEORY. 57 ways, and argues against, as the doctrine of Des- cartes. A. Nothing in what we have read out of Des- cartes' own writings justifies this. Is there any- other passage to which More can allude ? B. He refers expressly to the passage in the " Tractatus de Methodo," and discusses the argu- ment there given from the want of speech. But there remains a letter of Descartes to a certain great personage (ad Magnatem quendam), in which he repeats the doctrine of the treatise at somewhat greater length, but using the same comparison of a clock, and using it as a comparison. His whole contention is, that they, the brutes, have not reason like us, which he terms sometimes " intellect," or thought — "intellectum vel cogitationem." But that he means reason, and does not mean to assert that brutes are machines, seems plain from this, that in the same passage lie allows them natural cunning, or craft, as well as strength — " imo et puto nonnullos (animantes) esse posse quse naturalibus astutiis instruct® sunt quibus homines etiam astu- tissimos decipiant."* This is anything rather than describing them as mere machines.t stroke, can deprive almost all animals of life and sensation, turning them into marbles and machines." — Epist. Pars I., Ep. lxvi. * " Nay, I also think there may exist some brutes en- dowed with natural cunning to deceive the most cunning of men."— Epist. Pars I., p. 107. f He afterwards, in the same letter, says, that although brutes do nothing to show they can think, yet it may by some be supposed that as they have limbs like our own, so thought (cogitatio) may be joined with those limbs, as we know it is with our own, although in them the thinking principle (cogitatio) may be less perfect than in us. " Ad quod," says he, " nihil est quod respondeam nisi quod si ilia 58 INSTINCT. A. But what does Descartes reply to his corre- spondent's letter, in which he represents that to be his doctrine? Does he object to Mr. More's statement ? JB. Why, singularly enough, he does not in dis- tinct terms repudiate it, though this may be owing to his supposing that, as he had used the comparison of the clock, Mr. More is also speaking in the same terms, especially as Mr. More had professedly used figurative language, and spoken of Descartes' cutting off all animals as with a sword. But he speaks certainly in this answer* more strongly than elsewhere. " I have diligently inquired," says he, " whether all the motions of animals came from two principles, or only from one ; and as I find it clear that they arise from that principle alone which is corporeal and mechanical, I can by no means allow them to have a thinking soul. Nor am I at all hindered in this conclusion by the cun- ning and sagacity of foxes and dogs, nor by those actions done by animals from lust, hunger, or fear ; for I profess to be able easily to explain all these things by the sole conformation of their limbs." He adds, that though he sees no proof of the affirmative proposition (of their having a thinking principle), yet he also admits there is no proof of the negative ; and he then comes back to his favourite topic of its " being less likely that worms should have immortal souls, than that they should cogitant ut bos, animam etiam ut et nos immortalem habent, quod non est verisimile ;" (" To which I caB oaly answer, that if they think as we do, they must also have, like us, an immortal soul, which is uot probable ;") aBd he proceeds to say, that oysters, sponges, and other imperfect animals, can hardly be supposed immortal. * Pars I. Ep. lxvii. THEORY. 59 move like machines ;" and again refers to the want of speech. A. How any man who ever saw dogs in a field pointing, or greyhounds chasing a hare, or still more, dogs sleeping and manifestly dreaming with- out any external object to excite their senses or motions, or who had observed birds taught tunes, could ever suppose them mere corporeal or material mechanism, things made of dead matter and with- out life, I cannot comprehend. B. The best of it is that he positively affirms they have life. The letter I have just been read- ing from, and in which his doctrine, if anywhere, is stated the most explicitly, concludes by warning Mr. More not to suppose he denies them life ; and it is remarkable that he uses the very words vita and sensus, which Mr. More had represented him as refusing to brutes — " Velim tamen notari me loqui de cogitatione, non de vita vel sensu. Vitam enim nullo animali denego."* A. Then what does he mean by life and sense ? B. He goes on to tell you, " utpote quam in solo cordis calore consistere statuo ;" mistaking the indication or effect of life for life itself. He adds, " nee denego etiam sensum, quatenus ab organo corporis pendet."t Now, can it be that Descartes really supposed he had taken a tenable distinction here between mind in man and in brutes ? Or that there could be any perceptible difference between a machine endowed with life and sensation, and * " I would have it borne in mind, however, that I am speaking of thought, not of life or sensation, for life I deny to no animal." f " Nor do I deny them sensation, in so far as that de- pends upon the organs of the body." 60 INSTINCT. capable of imitation, of learning, and of much cun- ning — and a body animated by a mind ? To speak of sensation as depending upon the corporeal organs is either unintelligible or it is a begging of the question, and the very same definition might be given of our own sensation — nay, is given of it by the materialists, who hold our mind to be the mere result of a physical organization. Yet with these Descartes differs more indeed than with all others. A. I cannot help thinking, on the whole, that it is very possible this great man may have only meant to deny the brutes a reason, or mind like ours, a power of ratiocination, and not to consider them as mere machines. But I am clear of one thing, that if he did mean the latter, a more un- tenable doctrine never was broached upon this, or indeed upon any other subject. JB. We may therefore, I conceive, pass over this theory altogether. But another and a greater man has been so pressed with the difficulties of the sub- ject, that he has recourse to a very different sup- position, and instead of holding the Deity to have created brutes as machines without any mind at all, he considers their whole actions as the constant, direct, and immediate operation of the Deity him- self. Such is the doctrine of Sir Isaac Newton, which is saying enough to prevent any one from hastily rejecting it, or rashly forming his opinion against it. A. Does he not mean merely to derive the ac- tions of brutes from a perpetually superintending and sustaining power of the Deity, as we ascribe the motions of the heavenly bodies to the same constantly existing influence ? He probably only means that the brute mind, having been created, is THEORY. 61 as much under the Divine governance as the ma- terial powers, qualities, and motions are : in other words, that mind was created, and matter was created ; and that still the actions and passions of both are constantly under the guidance of the Creator. So that Sir Isaac Newton would no more deny the separate existence of the minds of brutes, than he would the separate existence of their bodies, or of the heavenly bodies. B. Here are his own words. The passage occurs in the famous 31st Query, or General Scholium to the Optics ;* and you see that, after recounting the structure of animal bodies as proofs of design, he adds, " And the instinct of brutes and insects can be the effect of nothing else than the wisdom and skill of a powerful, ever-living agent, who, being in all places, is more able by his will to move the bodies within his boundless uniform sensorium, and thereby to form and re- form the parts of the universe, than we are by our will to move the parts of our bodies." He pro- ceeds to guard the reader against a supposition of the Deity being the soul of the world, or of brutes, or of His being composed of members or parts, stating that He only " governs and guides all matter by his prevailing power and will." So that you see he draws the distinction between the * There is nothing more admirable for extent and gene- ralisation of view than this 31st Query. The happy con- jecture respecting the nature of the diamond in the 2nd Book (Part II., Prop. 10), does not surpass the wonderful sentence in the query, where Sir Isaac INewton classes to- gether, as similar operations, respiration, oxydation, and combustion. These have since been discovered to be the same process. In Sir Isaac Newton's time, their diversity seemed as great as that between the diamond and charcoal* D OZ IJJSTINCT. mind or will of men, which influences the motions of their bodies, and the influence which moves brutes ; plainly enough referring the latter to the Deity himself, as the primum mobile, or actuating principle ; for he allows that the kind of ubiquity or universal action to which you refer applies to our bodies, and I presume to our minds also, which were created and are sustained by Him. Of that no doubt can exist, because elsewhere he has laid down as clear this. ubiquity, called, as you know, essential ubiquity, to contra-distinguish it from potential or virtual. You find this plainly stated in the Principia — here is the celebrated General Scholium : " Omnipresens est non per virtutem solam, sed etiam per substantiam" — " In ipso continentur et moventur universa, sed sine mutua passione."* Therefore it is quite manifest that, in here treating of Instinct, that is, of the operations of animals, he considers the Deity's action as different from that general direction which he ascribes to Him over matter and mind by His essential ubiquity. In other cases He acts on matter and mind, and in the case of mind, He acts on matter mediately or through the agency of mind, which mind He moves. But here He acts, according to Sir Isaac Newton, directly on matter, and is the moving and acting principle of animals; and such has generally been the construction put upon his words as you have them here in the 31st Query. It has been so stated by so popular a poet as Pope, and also, though with less precision, by * " He is omnipresent, not virtually alone, but substan- tially" — " In him all things are contained and moved, but without mutually affecting each other." — Principia, lib. iii., Sch. Gen. THEORY. 63 Addison. The former takes the distinction, in his Essay on Man, between brutes as only having volition, which in them acts for both willing and reasoning: while men have the double faculty. He expresses himself with his wonted felicity : — " See then the acting and comparing powers, One in their nature, which are two in ours ; And Reason raise o'er Instinct as you can, Tn this 't is God that acts, in that 't is Man." Essay ; Ep. iii. Addison, in his 120th Spectator, after giving many instances in which he jumbles together Instinctive and Intelligent operations, concludes with the re- mark, that " they can no more be explained than gravitation can ; and come not from any law of mechanism, but are an immediate impression from the first mover, and the Divine energy acting in the creature." A. This dogma of Newton is certainly great authority — the greatest human authority. For it is the opinion — and, regard being had to the awful nature of the subject as well as the contemplative and religious nature of the man, it is probably the well-considered opinion — of the greatest inquirer into nature that ever existed, and whose conjectures have been almost as happy, and are certainly quite as marvellous, as his complete discoveries. B. Observe, too, that it is the opinion of his maturer years. The Scholium to the Principia was added in the later editions — when written does not clearly appear, but the second edition was pub- lished in 1713, and the third as late as 1726. The 31st Query to the Optics was added at a time which can be fixed better. The first edition of the Optics, published in 1 704, had not the queries. The second, d2 64 INSTINCT. published in 1717, had them ; and the third edition was corrected by the author's own hand a short time before his death; from which corrected copy the one I am now citing was printed in the year 1730, after his decease. But as he first published this passage in 1717, and was born in 1642, he was then in his 75th year, and had long before made ail his discoveries. A. I quite agree that as far as mere authority goes, no opinion ever had so great a weight — nevertheless we have the same illustrious man's authority, and example too, to teach us that it is by our own reason alone that we ought to be guided in philosophizing, and we must bring to the test of that canon even his best considered opinions. B. This I of course freely admit. Let us, then, examine a little this doctrine of immediate inter- position — which regards the work of the bee, for instance, as the direct and immediate operation of Divine wisdom and power. A. I need hardly warn you against being seduced by another bias, as powerful as Sir Isaac Newton's authority — the disposition we must have, if possible, to believe in a doctrine which, by exhibiting the finger of God as perpetually moving and working before our eyes, seems to bring us constantly into His presence, as if we saw a perpetual miracle wrought, and almost enables us to commune with the Deity, as the Patriarchs did of old. The gra- tification to us, as men, of reaching this position, should not make us, as philosophers, open our ears the more readily to any unsound or inconsistent reasonings, assume facts on slight grounds, or, passing over flaws in the argument, receive easily erroneous conclusions from what we see. THEORY. 65 JB. Again I entirely agree with you. Far from making greater haste to reach a position so delight- ful, I should take the greater care of my steps, that I might not slip and fall by the way : for that the road is slippery, the light glimmering, and the route over high ground, leading through preci- pitous passes, must, I think, be admitted freely. But let us step on cautiously as we have hitherto done. A. We left off with the deduction that brutes act from a principle, a thinking principle, a mental principle, something different from their bodies and from surrounding objects, but that they act towards an end of which they are ignorant, and accomplish that end without design, though very possibly they may also in so acting accomplish some intermediate end of which they are aware, and which they intend to attain. B. We may add another thing to the proposi- tion. The end which they accomplish blindly and instinctively is far the more important of the two, admitting that there is another and intermediate one. For, suppose your theory to be correct, that the solitary wasp gratifies some sense in carrying caterpillars and the bee, in making hexagons and rhomboids, it is plain that this is a very trifling matter; it neither feeds, nor clothes, nor lodges her, nor her brood ; whereas, the purposes to which those works are subservient are the continuation of the species of the insects respectively — the greatest and most favourite end in nature. A. True ; and you may add another thing, which I allow, even if my theory be ever so certainly cor- rect — that the only possible use of the intermediate end is the accomplishment of the other end — for if 66 INSTINCT. you grant me that the wasp carries caterpillars, and the bee makes geometrical figures, to please themselves, or gratify some sense, it is of no im- portance that either should receive that gratifica- tion : its only use is the unknown and unintended consequence of providing for the unborn issue. B. We are now then arrived at a very important height, from whence we may survey the subject correctly and advantageously. A. Let us be quite sure that we have left no obstructions, or rather that we have passed over nothing material — that we have left no objections in our rear, which may rise up and mock any inference we now draw. For instance, are all our facts clear? As to the bee's architecture, some have questioned the theory. I have heard it said that what seems so perfect a structure, and so judi- cious a dividing out of the space, so as to save room and work and material, is only the necessary con- sequence of placing a number of cylindrical or globular bodies together ; that if you blow many soap-bubbles in a basin they will, by their weight and pressure, settle into hexagons. JB. There never was anything more absurd than what some, calling themselves philosophers, have said without a moment's reflection on this subject. No less a name than BufFon may be cited for such nonsense. There are two decisive answers : — First, the soap-bubbles will not make hexagons, although your eye may see straight lines formed by their in- tersections, but not one hexagon the least like the bee's will you find in all the foam ; and next, there is not a single globe, or cylinder, or any figure like it ever made by any bee. Huber has seen them, or rather had them carefully observed, when at work ; THEORY. 67 they first make a groove, and then form its walls into planes, and all the rest is a making of planes and angles one after the other without any circular figures at all. So some one finding the eye of the bee to be a net-work, when greatly magnified, and each mesh a hexagon, thought he had found out why the bee works in that figure. To which the answer was obvious, that men and other animals having circular pupils should, by parity of reason, work in circles. But another answer was just as decisive ; that the light entering by a hexagon almost infinitely small no more helps the bee to that figure than if it entered by a circle or a square. Its paws and feelers are to work. Nay, suppose even it had a small pattern hexagon ready made, would its working a large one on that model be at all less wonderful? Not to mention that the hexagon is not the greatest wonder; the rhom- boidal bottom of the cell, and the angles which its three plates form with each other, and with the walls, are the wonder, and no one pretends to account for that. I pass over the form of the limbs ; nothing can possibly be deduced from them in the smallest degree fitted to aid the bee in her marvellous work. A. Have not some sceptical inquirers thrown other doubts upon the mathematical part of this great wonder ? I think I have heard something of the kind, as if Maclaurin, or whoever was the dis- coverer, had rather been fanciful, or over-refining, and that the bee had turned out to be not so good a geometrician as they had supposed. JB. Here is a sample of those doubts — though they are not indeed, like Newton's sound conjec- tures, stated with the modestv of doubts — but 68 INSTINCT. somewhat dogmatically. It was the celebrated Maraldi who first measured the angles, and found them to be 109° 28' and 70° 32' respectively. Reaumur afterwards set a young mathematician, pupil of Bernoulli, called Koenig, to find what were the angles that made the greatest saving of wax, and the result was by his analysis 109° 26' and 70° 34', being within two minutes of his own measurement, which measurement he had not com- municated to Koenig. But it turns out that the bee was right and the analyst wrong : for by solv- ing the problem in another way I find that he erred by two minutes ; and other mathematicians, with whom I have communicated, distinctly find the same thing, and we have also found how the error crept in.* A. These angles must have been very nicely measured ; for the difference of two minutes, or the 2000th part of the lesser angle, is very small indeed. How were the angles first ascertained ? JB. Maraldi was a most accurate observer, and he gives the angles, as I have stated, 109° 28' and 70° 32' ; and he gives them to differ with the result of Koenig's calculus, which was made after Maraldi had measured — so he could not have fancied the amount. But I have reduced it from measuring an angle to the easier operation of measuring a small line. If those are the angles, then it follows that the breadth of the rhomboid is exactly equal * See this fully explained in the experiments and demon- strations relating to the comb in this volume. There is some contradiction in Maraldi' s statement, ' Mem." Acad, des Sciences,' 1712, pp. 310-312; but the above measure has always, been considered to be that which he intended to state as his result. THEORY. 69 to the side of the hexagon, and you find it appears to be so. Also, if those are the angles, the rhom- boiclal plates are inclined to one another at the angle of 120°, that of the hexagon ; and you find they do not differ when you place them together, one within the other. However, I admit that this is not a very close admeasurement of such small differences ; and I presume Maraldi must have employed a micrometer. I have used one to com- pare the breadth of the plates and sides, and I cer- tainly can find no inequality. At all events, the bee seems entitled to the benefit of Maraldi's pre- vious measurement, which had been thought to put her in the wrong, now that the analyst and not she has been found in error. This, however, is nothing to what follows. A Berlin academician, thinking, I suppose, to do a kindness by Fre- deric II., objected to the bee, that though, if the dimensions of the cell be given, the saving is as I have stated, yet there is such a great waste of wax arising from those dimensions as proves the saving of wax to be no object. He sets himself the pro- blem of what he calls a minimum minimorum ; namely, to find the proportion between the length and breadth of the cell which saves most wax ; and he finds it something quite wide of the actual pro- portions. Now, I went over this analysis, and again found the bee right, and the philosopher at fault; for he had wholly left out the hexagonal covering of the cell's mouth, which, whether for brood or honey, there always is ; and I found the actual or bee's proportions to save more than the academician's, when this was taken into the calcu- lation. I moreover found the sides to be so much thinner than the bottom, that a shallow and wide d 3 70 INSTINCT. cell would have cost more, even independent of the covering at the mouth. Again, he admits the form chosen to suit the bee's shape, which the form he calls a true minimum never could ; but I show that it saves wax as well. . Lastly, I have solved another problem of a like kind, namely, to find the angles that save most of the fine or difficult work, which is the angular or corner-working evidently, and that also is the thickest part of the work ne- cessarily. I find the solution gives the very same angles which the bee uses, and which also save wax in the other view. So that she has hit upon the very form which in every respect is the most advan- tageous, and turns out to be on all grounds right — as indeed we might well suppose when we recollect who is her Teacher.* A. All this is most satisfactory, and it was worth stopping to state it. However, as we have made a pause before our next advance, it may be just as well to stop for a moment longer in order to con- sider what the bee's operation really is. How we should go to work had we to build cells is plain enough. Suppose we had discovered, which we should do by mathematical investigation, the pro- per form, the due proportion of the width to the length, and the proper angles of the bottom or roof — then we should have drawings and plans ; and by these we should either cut our planks, if the * Lord Brougham has given in the original work ( Dis- sertations on Paley's Natural Theology, vol. i.) all the mathe- matical demonstrations by which the positions in the text are shown to be undeniably true. He has also given a variety of curious observations and experiments on the architecture of bees, which appear to have escaped former philosophers. This part of the work, as too abstruse, is unavoidably omitted in the present publication.' — Ed. THEORY. 71 structure were of wood ; or if it were of stone, which more resembles the bee's materials, and is, be it observed, much more difficult and complicated to work with, we should, by those plans and by models or frames, run our courses. It would be a nice and difficult work to make this masonry, and would require the builder, both in hewing the stones and in putting them up, to follow the details of the plan in its parts, and without any regard to the general figure or result. He would be wholly unable to succeed if he looked to that ; all his building would be awry and out of the required figure ; his only chance is to make his plan exact, and his model- frames suit it ; and then he has instruments and tools, plumb-lines, squares and plumbs together, in order to raise his perpendiculars. By these he proceeds, for he cannot trust his eye or his hand a moment beyond the mere adjusting his work to his instrument and his plan. Now the bee confessedly has neither plan, except what is in her head ; nor any model at all whereby to guide her hand ; nor any instrument to adjust her work to the plan in her head ; nor any tool to work with except her paw and her feeler, which is as her eye in doing the work. Then how does she work ? JB. Certainly, this is a most important consider- ation. We cannot trust our eye or our hand an instant. We have no exact perception of the line, and no steadiness in pursuing it. We have re- course to plans and instruments because we cannot form our lines by volition, that is, by having a form in our mind and by making our hands follow that form. We therefore must first lay it down sensibly, and then guide our hands by material means. Thus we have no power of forming a dome, an 72 INSTINCT. arch, or a circle, or a perpendicular, or a level, or even a straight line at all, or any one line or form which we conceive in our mind. Far from being- able to follow these lines in great works, as roofs and walls and excavations, we cannot even represent such forms on a sheet of paper by our handywork. If we could do this we should work like the insect, who acts immediately, and not through the instrumentality of means. Unable to execute any purpose of our minds, as she does, we have recourse to instruments. We endeavour, as far as we can, to reduce every thing to a physical or material process — to exclude mental operation or agency altogether — to make the whole a material, or as we call it, accurately enough, a mechanical operation. Reason no doubt has taught us to do so ; but it has taught us a general rule ; and there is little or no reason, little or no operation of the mind, in its application to the particular cases. On the contrary, the use of the rule or method is that it precludes the operation of the mind as much as possible, and makes the whole physical, or nearly so. To take an instance — we reduce, by engraving or printing, the whole operation of drawing a pic- ture, or writing a page, to turning a lever, which does the work for us. So in building, though there is less mechanical facility, we guide our hand by the instruments employed and the lines drawn, making the operation as mechanical, as little mental, as possible. The bee's operation is all mind together. She has no plans, no instruments, no tools. It is as if by waving our hands among plastic materials we formed walls, and domes, and columns, and never deviated a hair's breadth from the perfectly accurate plan. I am very decidedly THEORY. 73 of opinion that this essential difference between the works of Reason and Instinct is of the greatest importance to our inquiry : for nothing can more show the peculiarity of the instinctive operation ; or more prove that the mind of the agent is as it were the machine, and the instrument, to perform the work, and to perform it with an unerring cer- tainty and with absolute perfection. A. Does this, which appears to me, as it does to you, a most important consideration, bring us at all back towards the ground of Descartes, whicn we had passed over as forming a position wholly untenable : I mean, that the insect is a mere ma- chine, fashioned by a perfectly skilful mechanic, and wound up to perform the functions which he designed ? B. Certainly not. The proposition which we have just been deducing from the facts is rather of a kind the very reverse : it affirms that the insect's mind performs the whole operation ; it makes the insect's mind the machine, if I may so speak. But let us see to what it also leads or seems to lead us. We perceive there is mind at work, action exerted, effect produced ; but we see that the mind is quite unconscious of the effect, and that the action works to a purpose which the mind never contemplated. There is a thing done, an important and rational thing done, but done by an agent who* neither intends nor knows anything about it. Here there is design, but there is no designer — an action and an object no doubt ; but that action performing, besides what the agent intended, knew, and dkf r something else (and that something the only im- portant thing), which the agent neither knew nor intended, and cannot possibly be said to have do^e 74 INSTINCT. at all. This by no means leads us back to Des- cartes' position, but does it not lead us to Sir Isaac Newton's ? The design is manifest ; the action is perfectly and surely adapted to it ; the purpose is with singular regularity effected ; must there not be a designer, and who can that be but the Deity ? There is none other that can be sug- gested even. Must it not be He ? A. Doubtless in one sense it must, as he is the designer of all we see. But how is he more the designer here than he is of the motions of the heavenly bodies, or the growth and germination of plants ? JB. As thus. In those cases there is nothing but matter affected, or acting ; whatever laws were originally imposed on matter are followed ; what- ever qualities first communicated to it are dis- played : all is material. There was design in the original formation of it, in the prescribing those laws, and impressing those qualities. That design these bodies fulfil ; they conform to the primaeval and original intention of their being. But there is no renewed design, no repeated intention, no special and particular disposition in each case of action. The Deity made a stone, and made the earth, so that the stone falls to the ground by virtue of the general rule of their formation. He is not to be referred to ; he needs not interfere each time the support is withdrawn from the stone, in order to. direct the path it shall take. If on that support being withdrawn some interposition were required to decide how it should go — for instance, whether it should stand still or not — although it be ad- mitted, that if it move it can but move in the straight line downwards, the case would more THEOKY. 75 resemble Instinct, though even here it would be different ; for it is as if each hair's breadth of the stone's motion required a new action to carry it on in its course. A. The Deity created matter so as to obey in each case certain general laws : so he created mind in like manner to obey certain laws in each case. Wherein do the two facts differ, the fact of material and the fact of mental action ? B. As thus. The moving power is wanting in the one case. The law is that matter shall act in a certain way, and mind in a certain way ; but is it the mind of the insect that acts when the whole mental process is wanting, namely, the knowledge, thought, and will ? Its mind acts, subject not only to a general law, but to a particular impulse each time. Who gives the impulse ? Besides, your doc- trine of the Deity creating the insect's mind such as to act so in given circumstances, applies quite as much to our Reason as to its Instinct. Let me, however, put a ease : suppose we saw a man born blind, to our own knowledge, without any teaching, and without ever having tried it before, move his fingers in the design of giving them exercise, as to keep them warm, &c, but holding a pencil in them, and by the same act producing, unknown to himself, a beautiful and finished portrait, of perfect resem- blance to the original : or suppose we saw a man who had been born and lived in a foreign country, and was utterly ignorant of our language, of which he had never heard a word, write a letter in correct English, or a beautiful copy of verses, while only meaning to try whether a pen was well cut, or the ink rightly made — these acts are quite analogous to the Instinct of bees. Nay, we may take a nearer 76 INSTINCT. case, and suppose a man who never had learnt ma- thematics, and did not know a line from an angle, to solve on a slate a problem of great difficulty with perfect and unerring accuracy, and this while lie was only trying the pen and the slate ; and suppose he then applied this solution to the com- binations of a perfect time-keeper, while he thought he was only cutting off the superfluous pieces of two lumps of brass and steel of which he intended to make weights, he being wholly ignorant of what a time-keeper meant. There is nothing more strange in this than the bee's architecture. It is kideed exactly, and in all its parts, a parallel in- stance. In all such cases (the extra thing done, and not known or intended, being far more difficult and more important than the thing intended and known to be done), we should at once pronounce that there was a miracle, because of the thing done being without the possibility of the apparent agent doing it unassisted, according to the ordinary laws *>f nature. In other words, want of power in the immediate agent compels us to believe in the inter- position of another agent having the power. There is dignus vindice nodus, and we call in the vindex. This is the foundation of all belief that there must be supernatural agency where the laws of nature are suspended. But in the cases put there is not only want of power, but of design. If want of power in the apparent agent drives us to suppose or infer the action of another unseen agent, want of inten- tion or design should drive us to infer the intend- ing of another designer, and want of both power and intention should make us infer the thinking of a planner who intends, and the action of an agent able to perform the work; in other words, to infer THEORY. 77 the interference of one who has both the will and the power, each of which is wanting- in the imme- diate or apparent agent. A. In the case you put of a miracle, there is a single instance, and because it is solitary, we say the laws of nature are suspended, and we call in supernatural aid. In the case of Instinct, it is the constant course ; it would be a suspension of the law, and a miracle, were it ever otherwise. It is as much part of the law of nature that the animal should do the thing in question without intending it, or knowing how he does it, nay, that he does it at all, as that man should do it knowingly and in- tentionally, or that the animal should knowingly and intentionally do those other things in which he acts rationally, and not instinctively. There- fore this case does not resemble a miracle. B. The case of a miracle I did not put in this way or with this view at all. I do not say that the instinctive act of the animal, or of man when he acts merely from Instinct, as he does, though most Tarely, are to be compared with miracles as being suspensions of natural law ; but only that the same reason which makes us, when arguing from such suspension of natural laws, conclude that some power has interposed different from the powers acting under those laws, requires us, when arguing from the acts done by the animal without either design or power, to conclude that some agent has interposed of power sufficient, and some intending and designing being of will fitted, to do the acts in question. Suppose, to put again my first case with a variation, we saw a blind man draw a like- ness as often as he stretched his fingers with a pencil in them, and every foreigner of a certain 78 INSTINCT. class write good English verses as often as he tried a pen, and every man of a particular description make excellent time-keepers as often as he cut away the parings of the metal balls he was forming into weights — we should in every such instance of these general laws (as they could now be) have a right to draw an inference of one and the same kind. What would that be? Manifestly that here the same thing was done without knowledge or intention, which in the other class of cases (those where reason and experience operated) was done by means of knowledge, and with intention. For the gist of the question and the whole diffi- culty is this — that we have two classes of cases— the same act done in the one class knowingly and intentionally, and in the other, without knowledge or intention — and as in the vast majority of all acts taken together of all kinds of agents, we can see no such thing— -ind.3»xl, cannot form the idea of such a thing — as an act without power and will to do it, or a thing resulting to all appearance from intention, because in itself such a thing as we should do if we intended a given thing, and yet without any Being to intend, so we are compelled to infer the power, that is, the knowledge of the intender. A, Indeed, it must be observed, that when we speak of a miracle we mean, and commonly do mean, two things, not only the fact seen of the laws of nature being suspended, but the inference drawn of some power interposing capable of suspending them, and therefore above them, and having sway over them ; and this inference arises from the ne- cessity under which we feel of accounting for the phenomenon observed by supposing an adequate THEORY. 79 cause ; in short, from our being unable to conceive anything done without a cause. The ordinary powers with which we are acquainted fail to ac- count for this event, and we therefore infer another power to be in operation. B. Certainly it is so ; but then this is precisely the case with Instinct, as compared with the other phenomena, namely, those things done with both knowledge and design on the part of the agent, that is, things in doing which the agent is known to us, and intends, and knows what he does. Sup- pose, according to the case so well put by Paley, in the beginning of his book, — suppose you find on a common a watch going and producing manifestly an effect according to its construction ; this would show a design in its maker ; but only a former, or bygone, a spent and executed design. Nothing would be seen designing or intending, as it were, before your eyes. Suppose, then, you saw the watch, or other machine, making a second and third machine, but not by mechanical contrivance — for that, too, like the case put by Paley, would still only be evidence of a former, or bygone, or executed design, — you must suppose a new watch to be made before your eyes without any material agency, or, which is the same thing, made by a machine wholly incapable of performing the opera- tion itself. Then you would necessarily infer from these the existence of some being, some thinking and designing and skilful being, capable of doing what you saw, that is, of making the machine ; and you would suppose this just as much if you saw an incapable body performing the operation, as if you saw the operation performed without any visible or sensible material agent at all. Now, 80 INSTINCT. this is precisely the case of the bee: it is the incapable body or being. A. May it not all be said to be only another inference of original and general design, as we de- duce that conclusion from the structure of the limbs of animals, and the functions suited to that struc- ture which those limbs perform ? JB. Even if it were so, there is the broad dis- tinction between mere mental and mere physical agency ; and the difference between the inferences to which those agencies respectively lead. But I apprehend the difference is greater still than this. The two cases are not at all the same or alike, hardly even analogous. We never know of matter, or any combination of material parts, acting or affected but in one way. We have not matter with, and matter without, gravity, cohesion, impenetra- bility. But if the phenomana of instinct are to be regarded as only one class of mental phenomena, we have here two kinds of mind, endowed with wholly different qualities, and acting in wholly different ways ; one kind such that the being pos- sessed of it neither knows nor intends what he is doing, and yet all the while does exactly as if he both knew and intended. Nay, in one case, the agent possessing this mind is manifestly able to act ; in the other, he is as clearly incompetent in any way that we can conceive. If no being is here concerned except the apparent, and unconscious, and impotent agent, it is like matter gravitating to a centre which does not exist : and then, to make the thing still more incomprehensible, and the dif- ference between matter as subject to general laws and this case the more extreme, both these kinds of mind are found in the same individual ; for he THEORY. 81 sometimes uses, as it were, the one, sometimes the other ; he sometimes acts knowingly and inten- tionally ; sometimes blindly, as an instrument to do he knows not what, nor cares — as if we had a piece of matter, a lump of metal, for instance, which at one time was heavy, and at another flew about in the air. A. There is certainly a material difference ; and I should not much wonder if we were, sooner or later, driven by the extraordinary nature of the case to some new conclusion. These things have really not been sifted as they deserved. Men have rested satisfied with general and vague statements, and I suppose their attention has been too much engaged by the great curiosity of the facts connected with the subject to let them closely reason upon the theory. However, I must again recur to my sup- position, and refuse to quit this position where we now stand until we have examined it more accu- rately. There are two kinds of mind, I will say. Then the Deity created two kinds originally. As he created two kinds of substance or existence, mind and matter, and as he endowed these with different qualities, so did he endow the two kinds of miid with different qualities. As he made matter solid and heavy, and made mind imperceptible to the senses, but endowed it with consciousness, so he gave the two kinds of mind different qualities — both of course must have consciousness, which I take to be the essence of all mind, at least we can- not conceive mind to exist without it — but one he made such that it could act rationally, knowing and intending all it did — the other such that it acted without knowing or intending; This hypothesis, you perceive, gets rid «ftthe,- necessity of supposing 82 INSTINCT. a constant interposition of the Deity, unless in the sense in which He is said to interfere for the pur- pose of maintaining and executing the general laws which he originally framed for the whole universe. B. I perceive no such thing. I do not think your supposition at all meets the fact, or removes the difficulty, or dispenses with the other inference. In one sense I may grant your assumption, namely, if you only meant that the Deity originally willed the animal should act in a certain way for a pur- pose which He fore-ordained, and which He yet concealed from the animal itself, though fore-known to Him, the Creator. But in the same way all rational acts and intentions may be said to have been fore-known and fore-ordained by the Creator, which indeed seems, at least in the case of an in- telligent agent, only to mean that with the Deity there is no such thing as present and future, but all things are seen as present. But then this re- solves itself into saying that the Deity originally designed and ordered the animal's acts ; and that this is the same thing as if He actually super- intended and did each act of the animal at the moment of action — which is the same thing with saying that the Deity constantly acts and not the animal, and that is the theory in question. But, in any other sense, to what does your objection, or the hypothesis put by you in order to escape the con- clusion, amount ? Only to this, that the Deity created the instinctive mind such that it acts with- out knowledge or intention, exactly as the rational mind acts with both the one and the other. Now the theory of course never meant to deny that the instinctive mind was created by the Deity, and endowed with certain qualities. Sir Isaac Newton THEORY. 83 expressly excludes the supposition of the Deity being the anima mundi, or the soul of any part of nature, and clearly never intended to represent Him. as Himself the soul of animals, but only as constantly guiding that soul. But the theory holds that the mind being endowed with certain qualities originally and at its creation, those qualities are summed up in this one, namely, to act, and to act quasi mind, but without knowledge or design, and yet to produce all the effects of both, and, moreover, that this constitutes the whole of the qualities of instinctive mind. This mind therefore was created such that it must always be the blind instrument in the Creator's hands ; its knowledge and design, by the hypothesis, reside as it were out of itself and in some other intelligent being, that is, in the Deity, who is to supply at each instant, the knowledge and design wanting in the animal mind, or to know and intend for it — and whether the Deity performs this operation, exer- cises knowledge and intention, beforehand and once for all, or constantly and continually at all times, seems an immaterial distinction referable to the former head of the alternative. The question always recurs — Was a mind created of such a species that it could act quasi mind without know- ing and intending ? Is not that contrary to the nature and essence of mind ? Nay, is it not a con- tradiction in terms? And is not your whole hypothesis of two kinds of mind grounded on a false position, which supposes a substratum to be endowed with various qualities, and then, in order to make two kinds of that substratum, confounds the qualities with the essence ? For what is mind but that which thinks, knows, wills ? If there be b-x INSTINCT. ro knowledge, will, intention, at all, mind is not concerned in the operation, and we come to the Cartesian hypothesis, that the animal is a machine. Therefore knowledge and design there must be ; and it must either exist in the animal mind or in some other mind which uses or employs the animal as an instrument. Can this higher mind do so beforehand, or otherwise than by constant opera- tion, that is, constant exertion of itself? A. Then are we not getting either to the Deity being the soul of the animal, or to the mind of the animal having none of the qualities constituting mind? B. We may suppose the mind to be the mere power of giving voluntary motion to the limbs, and to consist of no other quality, unless it thinks and intends. Then the Deity may have suffered it to have these powers, and to use them in some things, and there His own intelligence does not interfere ; but not to use such powers in other things, and there His intelligence does interfere. A. There is knowledge and intention in the ani- mal. The bee, for instance, knows it is carrying wax to a given place, and placing it in a given direction. So far as the thing is done, the agent knows, and wills, and intends what it is doing, and this in every possible case of instinctive action. B. But the whole question arises, not upon what the bee knows and intends, e. g«, putting par- ticles of wax in a place, but upon what she cannot possibly know anything about — the giving her work a peculiar form, most difficult to discover at first, most advantageous for a certain end, and still more difficult to follow and work by even when discovered. The question always is, who designs THEOHY. 85 and knows these things unknown to the bee? And we cannot eoceeive the Deity acting thus originally through a future and non -existing animal ; al- though we can easily enough imagine Him acting through an existing animal at the time. This is supposable on the theory of essential ubiquity, or indeed upon any theory of ubiquity, even virtual. It merely requires ubiquity — whether of essence, or of power — some ubiquity — which no one denies who believes in a Deity at all. A. A child shall place together different lines and angles, or other parts of figures, so as to form certain diagrams. The figures he thus unwittingly makes have certain properties quite unknown to him. All he intends or knows is to put the parts together ; the rest is consequential, arising from the necessary relations of number and figure : so in cases of physical or contingent truth : he may do, and mean to do, and know that he is doing, what will form a certain combination ; but the laws of nature acting on that combination, produce, un- known to him, effects which he never intended, and knew nothing of; as if he mixed sulphuric acid and oil of turpentine, and there was an explosion ; or an acid and an alkali, and there was a neutral salt and a crystallization. B. This, when examined, we shall find either to be a case wholly different from the one in question, or to be only idem per idem, as lawyers say when they have a case put which is like enough to the one in hand, but just as difficult to resolve ; so, in either way, the argument will remain unaffected. If the child plays with the things at random, and they happen to fall into a certain shape once, or it may be twice, that is certainly not the case of the 86 INSTINCT. bee, which regularly, and without ever failing-, always makes the figure required ; and, upon being obstructed in her operations, varies her means till she can again attain the particular form. If, on the other hand, the child places the things always accurately in the same way, then the case not only resembles the one in question, but becomes identical with it ; all the arguments and all the difficulties apply ; it is exactly idem per idem. So again, if the child does a certain thing with knowledge and design to do that and no more, leaving the rest to be done by some law of matter unknown to it — this is not the case of Instinct ; for the bee does all that is done by the operation of mental agency ; the wall, the hexagon, the rhomboid, are all made by the bee's living power ; she does not place wax and leave it to fall into hexagonal forms, as we mix salts and leave them to crystallize into cubes or hexagonal prisms; she forms the figures herself, and when she has done her work nothing remains to be done further by any law of nature. But if the child makes a combination constantly and cor- rectly, say some useful substance not to be made by accident or random working, then the case be- comes the same, and the argument is not affected by it in any way. A. You often complain of my obstinacy ; which I call sometimes caution, and sometimes slowness, according as I may be in a self-complacent or a modest humour. B. Then, as I do not remember ever to have seen you in the former state of mind, I am sure you must always call it slowness, which no one else ever called it ; but I will call it caution, and ask what more it leads to ? THEORY. 87 A. To this — that I would again hanker after my doctrine of general laws, primarily impressed on matter and mind both. You argue, and argue justly, that the operations of matter and of mind are to be kept apart ; you allow that the material operation is explicable by and referable to general laws ; you allow, too, that whatever is wrought by the operation of mind, acting as such, is explicable by and referable to general laws of mind, originally imposed, e. g., to desire what is agreeable to it by its general constitution ; to reject what is by the same constitution disagreeable. But you say that we see, in the case of instinctive actions, operations for which desires and aversions will not account, and operations carried on as if by the most refined and correct reason, and yet without any material or physical interposition ; that is, without any in- strumentality whatever, as if a cast were made without a mould, or a print without a plate. From hence you say it is difficult to understand how there should not be here an intelligent being, as well as mere desires connected with the senses — a cause connected with the understanding. Now, hankering as before, I still ask — though perhaps, after our long argumentation, with somewhat di- minished confidence — may not this be accounted for by supposing a general law adapting and ad- justing all the proportions beforehand ? May not the Deity have originally appointed the taste or desire of carrying caterpillars in the solitary wasp, for instance, exactly to the very number required to feed the worm after born, when, by the laws of matter, the egg shall have been hatched and the grub produced? So may not the bee form her hexagons and her rhomboids, in consequence of a e 2 88 INSTINCT. gratification felt by a fore-ordained law of her nature, in following those lines and angles, and no other ? B. That this is barely conceivable I may per- haps admit. But it is wholly unlike any other operation of the senses and desires of which we have any knowledge. It means this, that each desire is so nicely adjusted as to produce in the animal the effects of reason and intention in man, or of reason and intention in the same animal .when acting with design and knowledge, and not instinctively. The bird is to have a pleasure in bringing sticks or moss to a certain place, just at a given time, and putting them in one position — the solitary wasp, in bringing, and only in bringing, for it never tastes, a certain number of caterpillars, and to have no gratification in bringing one more, but the strongest desire, because a sensible pleasure, in bringing the eleventh as much as the first—also no kind of gratification in carrying the eleventh to any other place than the same where all the other ten were put — also a like pleasure in forming the hole for them, without the least regard to the use she is to make of it, nay, ignorant beforehand of its being to have any use ; and yet all the pleasure of carry- ing caterpillars is to consist in carrying them to that particular hole, and there is no gratification to be derived from carrying them to a place one hair's breadth on the right or the left. Still more —it means that the bee is to have such a gratifica- tion as proves irresistible, and occupies her whole life, in tracing certain lines and angles ; and yet this strong desire is so far under control, even of reason, that on obstacles being interposed, other lines and angles are to be made, reason suspending THEORY. 89 the desire for the moment. So that the law ori- ginally imposed, and the quality impressed on the mind, was not one and inflexible, to do a certain act in all circumstances, viz., to follow the impulse of the desires implanted, and which form the ani- mal's nature ; but it was a law or order coupled with a condition, and, as it were, giving a discre- tionary power provisionally, or a power to be used in certain circumstances ; it was as thus — a law or order to do a certain thing, to obey the impulse of the desire, unless certain events shall happen ; and then and in that case to cease following the im- pulse of the desire, and to follow another guide, or rather to use a faculty, namely, reason, and act according as it should direct, allow, or recommend in the circumstances. Now, in the mere union of desires with reason, while the desires act blindly by impulse and the reason with discrimination, there is nothing at all inconsistent or incompre- hensible ; it is the ordinary case of all mental operations. But the peculiarity of the case now supposed is that the desires act exactly like reason, producing the very same effects unknown to the agent which reason does with his knowledge. Are we not then calling different things by the same name, when we say that it is the influence of de- sires and appetites which makes the bee form her cell and the spider her web ? Might not the same kind of argument be applied to the operations admitted on all hands to be those of reason, for example, the investigations of Newton or La- grange ? Might it not be said that they were in- fluenced by an irresistible propensity, from deriving some gratification in drawing one line and using one divisor rather than another ? But we know 90 INSTINCT. this not to be the fact. Why and how ? Only from their statements and our own consciousness. But for this, the same argument might be used, and no one could refute it. So in the case of the animal we argue thus, because we cannot ask her and learn how she works. The impulse (it must all along be borne in mind) of which the argument speaks is a physical one, i. e., the effect of some external object, or, which is the same thing, some operation of the animal's body, on her senses ; it is a gratification of this specific kind which the explanation assumes — if not, it explains nothing. Then how little resemblance does any such grati- fication which we can form any idea of (leading the bee to her lines or angles, and the solitary wasp to her carriages and deposits) bear to what we know and feel to be the ordinary nature of physical gratification, and the desires connected with it ? A. This consideration has much weight — I mean the way you put the question as to the mathema- ticians. It seems to show that we have just the same right, in the case of the animal's instinct, to conclude in favour of design and reason, and an intelligent agent, and to conclude against its being animal impulse or the direct operation of the phy- sical senses, as we should have, did we see the mathematicians at work, observe their process, and mark the result congruous with that process, be- fore we spoke to them on the subject of how -their working was conducted. Indeed it is remarkable that we are in point of fact just as much without the evidence which the thus inquiring of them would afford, as we are in the case of the animal ; for who ever asked the question of either Newton THEORY. 91 or Lagrange, and yet who doubts that both worked their problems from knowledge with intelligence ? The reason why we do not ask them is, that we have no kind of doubt in our minds ; the view of the operation is enough for us. This is because we say to ourselves, " If I did so and so, I know it would be from knowing and meaning to do so and so, and not from any physical gratification." This inference we transfer to others, by saying, " There- fore I believe they act in like mariner." JB. Certainly ; and this, observe well, is the foundation of all our reasoning as to design. The only argument we ever have or can have in favour of any intelligent cause, from seeing the adaptation of means to ends, on surveying the works of na- ture, is, that, if we had done so and so, we should have had the design. All we see is the fact of an adaptation ; the inference of a cause, or of a de- signing being, rests on the kind of reasoning you have just stated. So that in reality we have reached this important position, that our argument for the existence of a designing cause at all in the uni- verse rests on no better, indeed no other founda- tion than our argument that instinctive action proves an interposition of the Deity at each mo- ment. A. I must farther observe, however, that beside the great weight of this consideration as last pre- sented, I feel the difficulty of the hypothesis of an original law generally imposed to be much aggra- vated by the consideration you adverted to at the same time, of a provisional and conditional law — a law to operate or not, according to circumstances, as if two implements had been given to the animal, Instinct and Reason ; for I feel the very gratuitous 92 INSTINCT. nature of this assumption ; and I know that there is not a greater proof of our reasoning being merely hypothetical on any question than when we find ourselves obliged to mould, refit, and modify our hypothesis, in order that we may adapt it to the new observations of fact. B. But there remains a difficulty still more in- superable in your way, which you do not yet advert to. The supposition of a law, and a provisional or conditional law, is all along founded on the assumption of a person to obey it, to act instinct- ively, unless a certain thing happens, and then to use Reason till a certain other thing happens, and then to fall back upon Instinct again. What can be more gratuitous, not to say absurd ? The suppo- sition that the Instinct is to cease and the Reason to begin in a certain event, implies that the animal acting by Instinct all the while was reasonable and intelligent, else how could he know when to lay down his Instinct and take up his Reason ? If I send a man to go straight on till he meets a mes- senger, or sees a finger-post, he is just as much a rational agent all the while he does not deviate from the way, as he is when, meeting the messen- ger or seeing the guide-post, he does deviate. So that the theory involves here this absurdity, that the instinctive action is all the while an intel- ligent and rational operation, contrary to the sup- position. I can really imagine nothing more de- cisive or demonstrative than this — and I purposely kept it to the last. A. Perhaps the end is not yet come ; you have said nothing of the known errors or mistakes of instinct — and thus I reserve also my strongest ar- gument to the last. I own that it was this consi- THEORY. 93 .deration which, always meeting me, drove me to deny the Newtonian doctrine, and to find any or every other escape from it ; for surely if the Deity is always acting, there can be no mistake— every thing must be perfectly successful and quite cer- tain. Yet how many cases of mistaken instinct do we see ? Mules begotten ; flies deceived by the smell of the stapelia to lay their eggs where they cannot breed the maggots, supposing the vegetable an animal substance putrefying ; and many others. Now, if this was only the result of similar desires originally implanted, there is no difficulty ; for the law would be to follow that smell, and this law is obeyed. B. Now, I really think you have just yourself answered your strongest argument ; for you admit there was that general law. Had it no design ? Doubtless, and but one, to lead the animal towards its food, and the nest for its young — the two great objects of all nature, preserving the individual, and continuing the species. Yet here they fail in particular instances, and do neither. Then is not this a defect or imperfection in the general law, detracting, pro tanto, from its adaptation to work its undoubted purpose ? The same Being gave the general law whom the Newtonian theory supposes to be the particular agent. Then is it not just as inconsistent with His perfections to believe He has made a faulty statute, as to suppose that He makes a mistake in particular cases ? Can there be any difference at all here? A. How do we get out of this in the general case? JB. You mean, how do we answer sceptical, or rather atheistical arguments, drawn from these e 3 94 INSTINCT. supposed errors or imperfections ? Only by saying, that as in the great majority of cases the design is perfect, and the wisdom complete, it is probable that further knowledge would remove all apparent anomalies, and reduce everything to order, and to a consistency with perfect wisdom and skill. In truth, we always assume design, even where we cannot trace it. The physiologist never supposes any part which he sees produced, as the spleen, to have no use ; but rests satisfied that there is a purpose, though he has failed to discover it ; and he hopes that it will hereafter be revealed to his inquiring eye. So when he finds apparent imper- fection, he has a right — nay, it is sound logical rea- soning — to suppose, that further knowledge would prove it to be perfect, as in the vast bulk of cases he has found perfection. The instances of erro- neous or defective instinct are as mere nothing compared to those of true or perfect instinct. A. We also approach here the argument on the Origin of Evil. There is something to be said, though perhaps not much, as to the irreverent na- ture of the supposition that the Deity acts, consi- dering the meanness or impurity of some instinct- ive operations, and the trifling nature of others. J5. You may well say, not much in this ; there is absolutely nothing at all. Our present argument only refers to physical, and not to moral considera- tions. Moral feelings or actions are of course not instinctive at all. There is no blame where there is no choice — no knowledge — no intention — no rea- son. Then, as to indifferent acts ; there is nothing small, or mean, or impure in the Deity's eye. There is nothing in this more than is sometimes, without due consideration, urged against the doc- THEORY. 95 trine of Essential Ubiquity. It all proceeds upon a forgetfulness that the Deity cares as much for one creature as another ; all are alike proofs of his wisdom ; all alike objects of his favour. So as to matter ; there is nothing impure or disgusting, ex- cept in relation to our weak and imperfect senses, which are, for wise purposes, so formed as to de- light in some things and to repudiate others. This is all relative, and relative to ourselves and our imperfect nature. To the Deity it can have no application. The structure and functions of the maggot, bred in the most filthy corruption that can disgust our senses, exhibits, even to the eye of the philosopher, how cumbered soever with the mortal coil, as marvellous a spectacle of Divine skill and benevolence as the sanguiferous or the nervous system of the human body, or the form of the most lovely and fragrant flower that blows. A. I think the instinct of hunger has begun to operate upon my structure ; whether stimulated by the operation of the gastric juice upon the coats of the stomach, or how otherwise, I do not stop to inquire. Nor do I apprehend that our good host- ess's instinctive love of order and method would approve of our keeping dinner waiting. JB. Your own excellent mother was the pattern of that regularity, as of so many other admirable qualities ; and the intercourse of society was in this, as in far more important particulars, greatly re- formed by her example. Therefore let us adjourn our further discussion, of which not much remains, at least not much that is difficult, till to-morrow. 96 ) BOOK OR DIALOGUE III. ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE.— (Facts.) A. It must be confessed, that for a subject so extremely amusing as well as interesting in a higher view, Instinct has been giving us but little matter of entertainment. I question if any per- sons ever talked upon it for so many hours without almost a single anecdote, or illustration of any kind from the facts, which are inexhaustible in variety, and every hour present new matter of wonder. Indeed, those ordinarily known are fall of interest ; and we have been going on with, I think, two, the bee and the solitary wasp, never even casting a look over the rest of this boundless and variegated field. B. Why truly so ; and the reason is plain enough. We had a problem to solve, and we set ourselves to try our hand at it. We assumed that the whole facts resembled those few to which we applied our arguments, or from which we drew our 1 inferences ; and our choosing two was quite right and safe — indeed, one rather than two, for we have dwelt more on the solitary wasp than even the bee, because no question could ever be made in her case of training or traditionary instruction. I do not at all repent of having pursued this course ; it FACTS. 97 has prevented digressions' and distractions, which would have ensued, had we gone upon the facts at large. We should have been perplexed, some- times by questions of evidence, sometimes by mi- nute differences of no importance to the argument, sometimes by analogies only calculated to mislead. Our way has been to pitch upon a good example or two, which in some sort embody the subject, as far as matter of fact is concerned — an abstraction of Instinct, as it were, without immaterial particu- lars — and to confine our reasonings and our illus- trations to that. However, there can be no sort of reason why we should not now reward ourselves with a little of the entertainment which, as you say, so amply belongs to this great subject. A. The Instincts which we have been considering as our choice examples, especially that of the bee. are certainly the most wonderful of all the animal phenomena. But the cases where sagacity is shown, and which seem really quite inconsistent with the doctrine that denies brutes all rational faculties, are most frequently cited to raise men's wonder ; and, as I take it, for this reason, that we set out with supposing the common animals to be wholly devoid of intelligence, and are astonished to find them sometimes acting as if they had it — while th operations of Instinct being in many brutes above what any degree of intellect can account for, we refer these to a totally different origin. B. I quite agree with you. Perhaps one need not go much more now into examples of Instinct. None can exceed that of the bee, which has from the beginning of the creation been working, and all over the world working, in the same manner, upon 98 INSTINCT. the successful solution of a problem in the higher mathematics, which only the discovery of the dif- ferential calculus a century and a half ago could enable any one to solve without great difficulty at all ; and which a celebrated mathematician, who was devoted to the ancient geometry, though an adept also in modern analysis, when he solved, conceived that he had gained no small victory for that favourite science by showing that it could solve this question of maxima and minima. A. Nevertheless, there are other wonders of a like kind, those which show Instinct to be as great in manufactures as the honeycomb proves it to excel in architecture. The paper-making of the wasp is of this class. She makes a paper as excel- lent as any manufacturer at Maidstone ; she has been for sixty centuries acquainted with what was only discovered by men between five and six cen- turies ago — for I think the question raised by Meer- man confined the discovery to the years between 1270 and 1302, though afterwards a specimen was produced as early as 1243. Moreover, when some of the more recent improvements, as the lengthening and equalizing the fibres, are considered, it is found that the wasp was all along acquainted with these useful devices also. B. I have observed, too, in examining her structures, that she makes two kinds of paper, white and brown, the former being fine cambric paper, and the two glued together by an excellent smooth and durable kind of cement. The white paper, I find, takes the ink as well as if it were «ized. A. When stories are told to excite wonder under the head of Instinct, they generally relate not to FACTS. 99 Instinct, but to the Reason or Intelligence which animals show. However, there are other wonders of Instinct beside those we have been adverting- to. The uniformity of the operations of animals of the same species everywhere and at all times is re- markable ; and the expertness they show from the first clearly proves that instruction and experience has nothing at all to do with the matter. Bring up a crow under a hen or under any other bird, it makes as exact a crow's nest as if it were born and bred in a rookery. JB. So Maraldi found that a bee an hour old flew off* to the proper flowers, and returned in a little time with two pellets of farina, then sup- posed to be the material for making wax, now known to be used only in making bees breed, since the capital discovery of our John Hunter showed wax to be, like honey, a secretion of the animal. Nay, before birth too the animal works to an end,, and with the same exact uniformity. The inimit- able observations of the great Reaumur show that the chick, in order to break the egg-shell, moves- round, chipping with its bill-scale till it has cut off a segment from the shell. It always moves from right to left ; and it always cuts off the segment from the big end. There is no such thing as a party of what Gulliver calls " little-endians " in nature. All these singular Instincts, however, regular and uniform though they be, are, when circumstances require it, interfered with by the rational process of adapting the means to the end, and varying those means where the end cannot otherwise be attained. But Instinct is regular and steady in all ordinary circumstances. A. The vast extent of the works performed by 100 INSTINCT. animals, especially by insects, is no less wonderful than their instinctive skill. This arises from their immense numbers, and the singular Instinct where- by they always work in concert when gregarious. "What can be more astonishing than the work of the termites, or white ants, which in a night will undermine and eat out into hollow galleries a solid bed or table, leaving only the outside shell or rind, and soon will make that too disappear ! JB. Or the ant-hills in tropical countries, twelve and fifteen feet high, as if men were to make a building the height of the Andes or Himalaya Mountains, when they are vain of having made the little pyramids ? But let us go to instances of the other class — of Intelligence. A. Had we better begin this new discussion by ascertaining whether or not the doctrine of a spe- cific difference between man and the lower animals is well founded ; or had we better begin with the facts ? B. I am upon the whole for beginning with the facts ; and I should come at once, as we have just been speaking of concerted operations of Instinct, to the case of the beaver, which is, under the head of Intelligence, almost as wonderful as the pro- ceedings of the bee and the ant are under that of Instinct. A. But before quitting the bee, and the ant, and the wasp, let us just observe their rational acts. They are nearly as notable as their instinctive ones. The bee, upon being interrupted by Huber in her operations, shortened the length of her cells ; dimi- nished their diameter ; gradually made them pass through a transition from one state to another, as if she was making the instinctive process subser- FACTS. 101 vient to the rational ; and, in fine, adapted her building to the novel circumstances imposed upon her ; making it, in relation to these, what it would have been in relation to the original circumstance if they had continued unaltered. It is found, too, that the ant, beside the wonderful works which she instinctively performs, has the cunning to keep aphides, which she nourishes for the sake of ob- taining from them the honey-dew forming her fa- vourite food, as men keep cows for their milk, or bees for their honey. B. On this discovery of Huber some doubt has lately been thrown ; and do not let us trouble our- selves with anything at all apocryphal when the great body of the text is so ample and so pure. But the expeditions of a predatory nature are by all admitted. They resemble some of the worst crimes of the human race ; the ants undertake ex- peditions for the purpose of seizing and carrying off slaves, whom they afterwards hold in subjection to do their work — so that the least significant and: the most important of all animals agree together in committing the greatest of crimes — slave-trading. A. With this material difference, that the ant does not pharisaically pretend to religion and vir- tue, while we bring upon religion the shame of our crimes by our disgusting hypocrisy. But the wasp, too, shows no little sagacity as well as strength. Dr. Darwin relates an incident, to which he was an eye-witness, of a wasp having caught a fly almost of her own size ; she cut off its head and tail, and tried to fly away with the body, but finding that, owing to a breeze then blowing, the fly's wings were an impediment to her own flight, and turned her round in the air, she came to the ground and 102 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. cut off the fly's wings one after the other with her mouth. She then flew away with the body unmo- lested by the wind.* JB. I have myself observed many instances of similar fertility of resource in bees. But perhaps the old anecdote of the Jackdaw is as good as any — who, when he found his beak could not reach the water he wanted to drink, threw into the pitcher pebble after pebble till he raised the surface of the liquid to the level of his beak. Lord Bacon tells it of a Raven filling up the hollows in a tree where water had settled. A. Or the Crows of whom Darwin speaks in the north of Ireland 3 who rise in the air with limpets and muscles, to let them fall on the rocks and break them, that they may come at the fish. It is said that animals never use tools, and Franklin has defined man a tool-making animal ; but this is as nearly using tools as may be — at least, it shows the same fertility of resources, the using means towards an end. B. It does a little more. It shows the highest reach of ingenuity, the using the simplest means to gain your end — the very peculiarity for which Franklin's own genius was so remarkable. He could make an experiment with less apparatus, and conduct his experimental inquiry to a discovery with more ordinary materials, than any other phi- losopher we ever saw. With an old key, a silk thread, some sealing-wax, and a sheet of paper, he discovered the identity of lightning and electricity. Here we are instituting a harmless comparison be- tween the bird and the sage : but the crow's ge.nius is said once to have come in collision with the head * Zoonomia, Sec. xvi. 16, FACTS. ] 03 of a philosopher in a less agreeable manner, when, mistaking the bald skull of Anaxagoras for a rock, she let fall the oyster from such a height that it killed him. A. But there certainly must be allowed to be even nearer approaches to tool-making, or, at least, to the use of tools, among animals. There are many insects which use hollow places, and some which use hollow reeds or stalks for their habitations. JB. Indeed they do ; and perhaps the most re- markable of all proofs of animal intelligence is to be found in the nymphae of Water-Moths, which get into straws, and adjust the weight of their case so that it can always float — at least, Mr. Smellie says that when too heavy they add a piece of straw or wood, and when too light a bit of gravel.* If this be true, it is impossible to deny great intelli- gence to this insect. A. Why should we doubt it? The crow in rising and letting the muscle fall shows as great knowledge of gravitation as the moth in this case. B. But an old Monkey at Exeter Change, having lost its teeth, used, when nuts were given him, to take a stone in his paw and break them with it. This was a thing seen forty years ago by all who frequented Exeter Change, and Darwin relates it in his Zoonomia. But I must say that he would have shown himself to be more of a philosopher had he asked the showman how^the monkey learned this expedient. It is very possible he may have been taught it, as apes have oftentimes been taught human habits. Buffon, the great adversary of brute intelligence, allows that he had known an Ape who dressed himself in clothes to which he * Transactions of Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. i., p. 42. 104 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. had become habituated, and slept in a bed, pulling up the sheets and blankets to cover him before going to sleep ; and he mentions another which sat at table, drank wine out of a glass, used a knife and fork, and wiped them on a table-napkin. All these things, of course, were the consequence of training, and showed no more sagacity than the feats of dancing-dogs and bears, or of the learned pig — unless it were proved that the ape on being taught these manipulations became sensible of their convenience, and voluntarily, and by preference, practised them— a position which no experiments appear to support. Smellie, however, mentions a Cat which, being confined in a room, in order to get out and meet its mate of the other sex, learnt of itself to open the latch of a door ; and I knew a Pony in the stable here, that used both to open the latch of the stable, and raise the lid of the corn- chest — things which must have been learnt by himself, from his own observation, for no one is likely to have taught them to him. Nay, it was only the other day that I observed one of the Horses taken in here to grass, in a field through which the avenue runs, open one of the wickets by pressing down the upright bar of the latch, and open it exactly as you or I do. A. I have known, as most people living in the country have, similar instances, and especially in B. But there is one instance of animals catching their prey in a way still more like the tool-making animal. I do not allude merely to the Spider's web, or to the Pelican's use of his large open pouch in fishing ; but to an American bird, of which you find a curious account in the Philadelphia Trans- FACTS. 105 actions.* It is called the neun-tbdter by the Ger- mans, as we should say the nine-killer, and is found to catch grasshoppers and spear them when dead upon twigs where the small birds come on which it feeds ; for the grasshoppers themselves it never touches. These are left, generally about nine in number (from whence its name), the whole winter, and they attract the birds of which the animal in question makes its prey. This is really using one creature as a bait, in order thereby to decoy and catch, another. A. It is certainly a singular and curious in- stance, whether of Instinct or Intelligence. Are there not stories told of apes using a cat or some other animal — I should suppose rather anything than a cat — to get chesnuts out of the fire ?— or what else is the origin of the phrase cafs paw? B. Fable, I presume. Many fables have a real origin in fact : this, I suspect, has not. Monkeys^ on the contrary, have been used by men to obtain fruit or cocoa-nuts, by pelting them, and their defending themselves with a fire of nuts. A. That, however, is a plain instance of sagacity and imitation. They used missiles, as missiles were used against them. Some of our own belligerent measures of retaliation have not always been nearly so judiciously contrived. B. No : we once, by way of retaliating on Na- poleon, helped him ; as if the monkeys had pelted themselves, instead of throwing at us. However, an unexceptionable authority, Captain Cook, or at least Captain King, in Cook's last voyage, has a singular instance of sagacity in the use of means, and almost weapons, in Bears. Here you have his * Vol. iw 106 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. account of their mode of hunting : " The wild deer (barein) are far too swift for those lumbering sportsmen ; so the bear perceives them at a distance by the scent ; and, as they herd in low grounds, when he approaches them, he gets upon the adjoin- ing eminence, from whence he rolls down pieces of rook ; nor does he quit his ambush, and pursue, until he finds that some have been maimed."* A. Certainly, such a well-attested fact as this is very important, and worth a thousand stories of lions and jackals. But you spoke of coming at once to the Beaver, as the parallel to the Bee. B. Certainly it is, and may be called, in respect of its works, the Bee of quadrupeds, or if you will, of Intelligent animals, holding among them as high a place as does the Bee among Instinctive creatures. Nevertheless, there may be some doubt raised how far Instinct has a share in his operations. They are of great uniformity: all packs or companies of beavers, and at all times, build the same shaped structure, and resemble one another closely in matters which are arbitrary, and therefore cannot be considered as the result of experience or reflec- tion — cannot be dictated by circumstances. This, however, opens a question of some difficulty, which, according to the plan we are pursuing, may be left to the end of our discussion, after we shall have gone through the facts. In considering the beaver, I think we shall do well to follow Buffon, as we did upon the ape, because he purposely re- jected everything marvellous or doubtful in the accounts he had received from travellers, and these must have been numerous, for Canada was then a French colony. Those singular animals assemble * Cook's Third Voyage, vol. iii., p. 306. FACTS. 107 in bodies of from two to four hundred, and choose a convenient station in the lake or the river, having regard to the slope of its banks and their woodiness, but also, no doubt, to the frequency of floods in the water. If it is a lake, or a river that varies little in its level, they build their huts without any further structure, but if the level changes much, they construct a dam or dyke, what we call a breakwater, extending eighty or a hundred feet across, and ten or twelve broad : they thus keep the water nearly of the same height, at least they thus always obtain a sufficient depth of water. They then work in concert on the wood, gnawing the trees and branches to suit their operations. A tree the thickness of a man's body they will soon bring down by gnawing round its base, but on one side merely, and they know so exactly the opera- tion of gravity on it, that they make it fall always across the stream, so as to require no land-carriage. It must be observed, in passing, that if they da this the first time they have built, and without any previous experience of falling bodies, the operation must be taken as purely instinctive. They form their cabins so as to contain from fifteen to twenty-five or thirty animals ; each cabin has two doors, one to the land, and one to the water, in order that they may either go ashore, or bathe or swim, and sit in the water, which is part of their pleasure, or rather of their amphibious ex- istence. They have in each cabin also a storehouse for placing the parts of the shoots on which they feed (for that they make provision against winter is quite certain), and room enough for accommoda- ting their young when brought forth. The cabins are built on piles, so as to be out of the water ; 108 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. they are neatly plastered with cement, the animal's flat and scaly tail being used as a trowel in this operation. They are of sufficient strength to resist not only the stream and floods to which occasionally they may be exposed, but also severe storms of wind. The beavers choose to work with a kind of earth not soluble in water, and which they mix with clay. Such is the account of those very rational and intelligent proceedings which Buffon, sceptical beyond all men of stories respecting animal reason, sifted out of all he had heard, after rejecting everything that bore the appearance of exaggera- tion or fancy. He adds, that a single beaver which he had, showed, in its solitary and domestic state, no signs of sagacity or resources ; but rather ap- peared to be a stupid animal. According to his strange theory, that animals are degenerating in mind, and losing their faculties as man improves (a notion derived from confounding their loss of dominion, power, and numbers, in a wild state, with their loss of intellect),* he considers the beaver as the " only subsisting monument of the ancient intelligence of brutes." A. They say doubts have of late been cast upon the former accounts of the beaver. I am told, Hearne, one of the best North American travellers, is cited for this* B. Here is what that excellent observer says upon the subject : you shall judge if he has in the least altered the case. The beavers select, he says, either in small lakes or in rivers, spots where the water is of such depths as not to freeze to the bottom, preferring, however, running water, be- cause this helps them to convey the timber they * VqI. iy., p. 73, and v., p. 21. FACTS. 109 require. They begin by forming a dyke across with fascines, stones, and mud, but without piles buried in the ground ; this dyke, whose only use is to give them a convenient level of water, is convex on the upper side fronting the stream ; and it be- comes solid and strong by repeated repairs, so that the branches sprout, and birds build in the hedge which it forms. Each hut contains commonly one or two, but sometimes four families ; and some- times each is separated from the others by a parti- tion. The hut has a door opening on the water, and no connexion with the land. He then goes on to show how they cut down and build, wherein he differs from the common accounts only in saying that no piles are used in the construction. They work, he says, only by night, and each season they cover the buildings with a new coat of mud-plaster, as soon as the frost sets in. In summer they make ex- cursions in the woods, choosing the trees they mean to make use of, and marking the position of new settlements, when their increase of numbers requires them to plant colonies. Their wood-cutting begins at the end of summer, and the building is carried on in autumn. They have also subterraneous re- treats along the banks of the river or lake, to serve as a place of refuge when they may be attacked by the glutton. You perceive, then, that there is very little discrepancy between this account and Buffon's ; indeed, there is one remarkable addition to the latter, if it can be relied upon, the precau- tion taken in summer to choose and to mark out the convenient stations where the new settlements are afterwards to be made. A. There seems reason to suppose that other animals still preserve their sagacity and act in con- F 110 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. cert. No one can have observed a flock of pigeons without perceiving that they have sentinels posted to give the alarm. Indeed, wilder birds act in like manner. Fieldfares, when they are occupying a tree which you approach, remain steady and fear- less until one at the extremity rises on her wings and gives a loud and very peculiar note of alarm, when they all get up and fly, except one who con- tinues till you get near, as if she remained to see that there really was occasion for the movement, and to call them back if the alarm proved a false one. She too at length flies off repeating the alarm-note. B. In the forests of Tartary and of South Ame- rica, where the Wild Horse is gregarious, there are herds of five hundred or six hundred, which, being ill prepared for fighting, or indeed for any resistance, and knowing that their safety is in flight, when they sleep, appoint one in rotation who acts as sentinel, while the rest are asleep. If a man approaches, the sentinel walks towards him as if to reconnoitre or see whether he may be deterred from coming near — if the man continues, he neighs aloud and in a peculiar tone, which rouses the herd and all gallop away, the sentinel bringing up the rear. Nothing can be more judicious or rational than this arrangement, simple as it is. So a horse, belonging to a smug- gler at Dover, used to be laden with run spirits and sent on the road unattended to reach the rendez- vous. When he descried a soldier he would jump off the highway and hide himself in a ditch, and when discovered would fight for his load. The cunning of Foxes is proverbial ; but I know not if it was ever more remarkably displayed than in the Duke of Beaufort's country ; where Reynard, being FACTS. Ill hard pressed, disappeared suddenly, and was, after strict search, found immersed in a water-pool up to the very snout, by which he held a willow-bough hanging over the pond. The cunning of a Dog, which Serjeant Wilde tells me of, as known to him, is at least equal. He used to be tied up as a pre- caution against hunting sheep. At night he slipped his head out of the collar, and returning before dawn, put on the collar again, in order to conceal his nocturnal excursion. Nobody has more fami- liarity with various animals (beside his great know- ledge of his own species) than my excellent, learned, and ingenious friend, the Serjeant; and he pos- sesses many curious ones himself. His anecdote of a drover's dog is striking, as he gave it me, when we happened, near this place, to meet a drove. The man had brought seventeen out of twenty oxen from a field, leaving the remaining three there mixed with another herd. He then said to the dog " Go, fetch them ;" and he went and singled out those very three. The Serjeant's brother, however, a highly respectable man, lately Sheriff of London, has a dog that distinguishes Saturday night, from the practice of tying him up for the Sunday, which he dislikes. He will escape on Saturday night and re- turn on Monday morning. The Serjeant himself had a gander which was at a distance from the goose, and hearing her make an extraordinary noise, ran back and put his head into the cage — then brought back all the goslings one by one and put them into it with the mother, whose separation from her brood had occasioned her clamour. He then re- turned to the place whence her cries had called him. I must however add, that I often have con- versed with Scotch shepherds coming up from the f2 112 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. Border country to our great fairs, and have found them deny many of the stories of the miraculous feats of sheep-dogs. Alfred Montgomery and I, the other day, cross- questioned a Roxburghshire shepherd with this result. A. Many of the feats which we are now ascrib- ing to intellectual faculties may be instinctive operations. How shall we distinguish ? JB. The rule seems simple. Where the act is done in ordinary and natural circumstances, it may be called instinctive or not, according as it is what our reason could, in the like circumstances, enable us to perform or not, and according as the animal is in a situation which enables him to act know- ingly or not. Thus a bee's cell is made by a crea- ture untaught ; a solitary wasp provides food for an offspring it never can see, and knows nothing of. We set these things down to Instinct. If horses, fearing danger, appoint a sentinel, it may be In- stinct certainly, but there is here nothing to exclude Intelligence, for they do a thing which they may well do by design, and so differ from the bee ; they are aware of the object in view, and mean to attain it, and so differ from the wasp. But these remarks apply to acts done in ordinary circumstances, and which I admit may or may not be instinctive. Another class is clearly rather to be called rational. I mean where the means are varied, adapted, and adjusted to a varying object, or where the animal acts in artificial circumstances in any way. For example, the horse opening a stable-door, the cat a room-door, the daw filling a pitcher with stones. So there is a singular story told by Dupont de Ne- mours in Autun's Animaux Celebres, and which he says he witnessed himself. A Swallow had FACTS. 113 slipped its foot into the noose of a cord attached to a spout in the College des Quatre Nations at Paris, and by endeavouring to escape had drawn the knot tight. Its strength being exhausted in vain attempts to fly, it uttered piteous cries, which assembled a vast flock of other swallows from the large basin between the Tuilleries and Pont Neuf. They seemed to crowd and consult together for a little while, and then one of them darted at the string and struck at it with his beak as he flew past ; and others following in quick succession did the same, striking at the same part, till after continuing this combined operation for half an hour, they suc- ceeded in severing the cord and freeing their com- panion. They all continued flocking and hovering till night ; only, instead of the tumult and agitation in which they had been at their first assembling, they were chattering as if without any anxiety at all, but conscious of having succeeded. A. The means taken to escape from danger, and to provide for security, are certainly often of this description, the danger being often of a kind purely accidental and solitary, and the operation of the animal varying in different and new circumstances. Some birds wholly change their mode of building to avoid snakes, hanging their nests to the end of branches, and making the exit in the bottom, in places where those reptiles abound. B. So too the Ants in Siam make no nests on the ground, as with us, but on trees, that country being much subject to inundations. But you find this change of habits in animals, upon circumstances changing, pretty general. The Dogs which the Spaniards left in the island of Juan Fernandez were found to have lost the habit of barking, when 114 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. Juan and • D'Ulloa visited that famous spot in the course of their journey in South America. Possibly they found that barking warned their prey, and enabled it to escape. But Dogs in Guinea howl and do not bark, and when European dogs are taken there they lose their bark in three or four generations. This fact, then, is somewhat equi- vocal. A. The docility of some animals may, however, as it seems to me, be strictly ranged within the class of facts we are speaking of. Although chil- dren, as well as animals, learn through fear and kindness, both operating (and fear alone would suffice), yet it is an act of Intelligence to follow the dictates of both feelings : it implies this pro- cess of reasoning, — " If I do so and so, I shall have such a punishment or such a reward." Now the degree to which animals are teachable is won- derful. All Singing-Birds probably learn their whole notes. J3. Yes; Daines Barrington has demonstrated this by numerous experiments * on various birds ; the young untaught birds, being placed in the nests of different species of birds, always had the song of those it nestled with ; and we all know how a Piping Bullfinch can be taught almost any tune. They seem to have no notion of harmony or me- lody. I recollect a Green Linnet, which I had when a boy, or rather a mongrel between that and a goldfinch, being placed in a kitchen, and leaving its own fine and sweet notes, to take to an imita- tion, and a very good and exceedingly discordant one, of a jack which, being ill-constructed, gene- rally squeaked as if it wanted oiling. * Phil. Trans., 1776. FACTS. 1 15 A. Dogs show the greatest talents in learning. The feats of pointers, but still more of shepherds' dogs, after making all the deductions you have mentioned, are astonishing. It almost seems as if the shepherd could communicate, by sign or by speech, his meaning, when he desires to have a particular thing done. But assuredly the dog takes his precautions exactly as he ought, to prevent the sheep from scattering, and to bring back run- aways. Indeed, Greyhounds and other dogs of chace, as well as Pointers backing one another, show the adaptation of, and variation in, the means used towards an end. 3. Retrievers exceed all other dogs in this re- spect. There was one died here a year or two ago that could be left to watch game, till the keeper went to a given place, and she would then join him after he had ranged the field ; nay, could be sent to a spot where game had been left, and where she had not been before. Indeed, she did many other things which I have hardly courage to relate. A. How were her pups ? I have always found such extraordinary faculties hereditary. B. My worthy, intelligent, and lamented friend, T. A. Knight (so long President of the Horticul- tural Society), has proved very clearly that the faculties of animals ara hereditary to such a point as this. He shows that even their acquired facul- ties — the expertness they gain by teaching — de- scends in the race. His paper is exceedingly cu- rious. But I think we need hardly go so far as to his minute details for proof of the fact. It is found that where man has not been, no animals are wild and run away from his approach. When Bougainville went to the Falkland Islands (or, as 116 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE the French call them, the Malouines), he found himself and his men immediately surrounded by all kinds of beasts and birds, the latter settling- on their shoulders. No navigators had ever been there before. Lord Monboddo says that the same thing had been related to him by navigators.* It seems clear, then, that the running away from man, which seems natural to all wild animals in or bor- dering upon inhabited countries, is an acquired propensity, transmitted to the descendants of those whose experience first taught it them as necessary for their safety. A. Have you Knight's paper hej S ? I know the accuracy of his observation to equal his great in- genuity. B. To that I too can bear my testimony. Here is his principal paper, read lately before the Royal Society. It is given as the result of his observa- tions and experiments, made for a period of sixty years ; it is therefore most justly entitled to great respect. He chiefly dwells on the case of Spring- ing Spaniels, and among other instances gives this, which is indeed very remarkable. He found the young and untaught ones as skilful as the old ones, not only in rinding and raising the woodcocks, but in knowing the exact degree of frost which will drive those birds to springs and rills of unfrozen water. He gives the instance, too, of a young re-, triever, bred from a clever and thoroughly-taught parent, which, being taken out at ten months old, with hardly any instruction at all, behaved as well and knowingly as the best-taught spaniel, in rush- ing into the water for game that was shot, when pointed out to it, however small, bringing it, and * Origin of Language, b. ii., ch. 2. FACTS. 117 depositing- it, and then going again, and when none remained, seeking the sportsman and keeping by him. He imported some Norwegian ponies, mares, and had a breed from them. It was found that the produce " had no mouth," as the trainers say; and it was impossible to give it them ; but they were otherwise perfectly docile. Now in Norway, draught horses, as I know, having travelled there and driven them, are all trained to go by the voice, and have no mouth. — Again, he observed that they could not be kept between hedges, but walked deli- berately through them — there being, he supposes, none in the country from which their dams came. A. Does he speak of any other animal ? B. Yes, he mentions his observation on Wood- cocks, which he could remember having been far less wild half a century ago ; for on its first arrival in autumn, it was tame, and chuckled about if dis- turbed, making but a very short flight, whereas now, and for many years past, it is very wild, run- ning in silence and flying far. He gives an in- stance of sagacity in a Dog, unconnected with hereditary intelligence. He one day had gone out with his gun and a servant, but no dog. Seeing a cock, he sent the servant, who brought this spaniel. A month afterwards he again sent for the same dog from the same place. The servant was bring- ing him, when at twenty yards from the house the spaniel left him, and ran away to the spot, though it was above a mile distant. This he often re- peated, and always with the same result ; as if the animal knew what he was wanted for. Leonard Edmunds tells me of a dog (a Newfoundland spaniel) of Mr. Morritt's, at Rokeby, which has been known to take the shorter road to where he p3 118 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. knew he was wanted, and leave the servant or keeper to go round about. You yourself told me of a dog that met you sporting by a short cut un- known to you. A. The manner in which animals can find their way is very extraordinary. But though, in many cases, it may be through close observation, and observation the clearer and better remembered be- cause, like the Indian woodsmen, they have so few ideas ; yet, in other cases, it seems an Instinct very difficult to conceive in its workings. In truth, if the stories told be true, I question if any instance we have yet examined of Instinct be so truly un- accountable on any principles of intelligence. I have known of dogs sent to a distance, and coming home immediately, though taken in the dark. B. That might be from smell or track, but stories are also told of dogs and cats taken in ham- pers, and finding their way back speedily. L. Ed- munds had one that was carried from Ambleside to three miles on the other side of Burton, a dis- tance of twenty-seven miles, in a close hamper, by a coach; and it found its way back next morning. Dr. Beattie's account of a dog which was carried in a basket thirty miles' distance, through a country he never had seen, and returned home in a week ? is less singular than this, even if it were as well authenticated. Dr. Hancock, in his excellent work on Instinct, which, however, contains fully as much upon the peculiar tenets of the Society of Friends as upon our subject, relates the story of a dog being conveyed from Scotland to London by sea, and finding his way back ; of a Sheep returning from Yorkshire to Annandale, a distance of at least eighty miles ; and of another Sheep returning FACTS. 119 from Perthshire to the neighbourhood of Edin- burgh. Kirby and Spence, too, in their Introduc- tion to Entomology, state, on the authority of a captain in the Navy, a strange anecdote of an Ass taken from Gibraltar to Cape de Gat on board of ship, and finding its way immediately back -through Spain to the garrison, a distance of two hundred miles of very difficult country. The ass had swam on shore when the ship was stranded. This fact seems to be well authenticated, for all the names are given, and the dates. A. There is no end of such facts, and many of them seem sufficiently vouched. The Letters on Instinct mention a cat which had been taken to the "West Indies, and on the ship returning to the Port of London she found her way through the city to Brompton, whence she had been brought. B. That is a work I have often wished to see, and never been able to get. Dr. Hancock quotes it for one of the most remarkable proofs of sagacity and resource in the Goat, and this operation has been, it seems, observed more than once. When two Goats meet on a ledge bordering upon a pre- cipice, and find there is no room either to pass each other, or to return, after a pause, as if for reflec- tion, one crouches down and the other walks gently over his back, when each continues his perilous journey along the narrow path. A. In Rees's Cyclopaedia a story is given as well vouched, of a cat that had been brought up in amity with a bird, and being one day observed to seize suddenly hold of the latter, which hap- pened to be perched out of its cage, on examining, it was found that a stray cat had got into the room, and that this alarming step was a manoeuvre to 120 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. save the bird till the intruder should depart. But what do you make of carrier-pigeons ? The facts are perhaps not well ascertained ; there being a good deal of mystery and other quackery about the training of them. B. I desired one of the trainers (they are Spital- fields weavers generally) to come, that I might examine him about his art, but he has never been with me. I have read and considered a report made to me on the subject. It is said the bird begins his flight by making circles, which increase more and more in diameter as he rises ; and that he thus pilots himself towards his ground. But still this indicates an extraordinary power of observa- tion ; for they come from Brussels to London and return. Nay, they have been known to fly from the Rhine to Paris. Serjeant Wilde took pigeons of the Rock kind to Hounslow, and they flew back to Guildford-street in an hour. They were taken in a bag, and could see or smell nothing by the way. On being let loose, they made two or three wide circles, and then flew straight to their dove- cot. The Serjeant also knew of a cat which a shopkeeper's apprentice in Fore-street had been desired to hang, and found he could not. He then took it in a bag to Blackfriars Bridge and threw it into the river — the cat was at home in Fore-street as soon as the apprentice. He might have made a circuit, but certainly the cat returned in an hour or two. The grocer's name was Gardner — the distance is certainly above a mile, and through the most crowded part of London. The case of bees is referable to Instinct clearly. Honey-finders in America trace their nests by catching two bees, carrying them to a distance, and letting them fly. FACTS. 121 Each takes the straight line towards the nest or hive, and by noting these two lines, and finding where they intersect each other, the hive is found. Now the bee is known to have a very confined sphere of vision, from the extremely convex form of her eye. She is supposed only to see a yard or so before her. A. I fancy we must pass over the subject of migration for a like reason. It seems still involved in much obscurity and doubt, though I take for granted that no one now yields to Daines Barring- ton's theory, which denies it altogether. B. Clearly no one ; the facts are quite indis- putable as far as negativing that goes ; and indeed his reasonings are so full of prejudice, or precon- ceived opinion, and his suppositions for disposing of the facts so strained, that his argument never could have had much weight. One fact seems also not to be disputed, and is referable to Instinct alone. I mean the agitation which, without any cause, comes on upon a bird of any of the migra- tory classes at the appointed season of migration. It is, in all probability, connected with the sexual impulses. A. The communication with each other, which animals have by sounds or signs, can, I think, hardly be doubted. JB. The observations of Huber clearly show that ants have a kind of language by means of their feelers or antennae ; and every day's experience seems to show this in other animals. A. Some believe that they have a notion of what men are saying, and no doubt very strange and lucky guesses have sometimes been made, one of whieh I wrote you an account of. I had it from a 122 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. most accurate and literal person, and it tends to prove that his shooting' clogs had found out his in- tention of going into Nottinghamshire the day after. However, it is perfectly clear that these things are referable to minute and exact observa- tion of things which escape us in the greater multi- tude of our ideas and concerns. All this, however, only illustrates the more how well animals can profit by experience, and draw correct inferences from things observed by them. M. Among other instances referable plainly to intelligence must be ranked the devices which one animal is known to fall upon for benefiting by an- other's operations. The ant enslaving workers is the most curious instance certainly. But the cuckoo laying in other birds' nests, and leaving her progeny to be brought up by them, is another. Nor can this be set down wholly to the score of Instinct ; for there are abundant proofs of her also building when she cannot find a nest, and then she lays in her own, and hatches and rears her brood. This curious and important fact, long disbelieved by vulgar prejudice, was known to that great ob- server Aristotle, who says she sometimes builds among rocks, and on heights.* Darwin confirms this by the observations of two intelligent friends whom he cites.f The man-of-war bird is a still more singular instance of contrivance, for though its food is fish, it has not such a form as to be fit for catching any, and therefore it lives piratically on the prey made by other fishing birds ; hence the name we have given it. A. Only think of our never having all this while said a word, or more than a word, of either the * Lib. vi., c. 1. f Zoonoraia, vol. xvi., p. 13. FACTS. 123 Fox or the Elephant, proverbially the two wisest of animals. Of the former's cunning every day shows instances ; but that the elephant should be left to take care of a child unable to walk, and should let it crawl as far as his own chain, and then gently lift it with his trunk and replace it in safety, seems really an extraordinary effect of both intelligence and care, and shows that fine animal's gentle nature, of which so many anecdotes are told by travellers in the East. Mi The amiable qualities of brutes are not quite within the scope of our discussion, unless indeed in so far as whatever things are lovely may also be said to betoken wisdom, or at least reflection. The natural love of their offspring I should hardly cite in proof of this, because it seems rather an in- stinctive feeling. But the attachments formed be- tween animals of different classes, a cat and a horse, a clog and a man, and often between two elderly birds, may be cited as interesting. One of these friends has been known to be unable to sur- vive the other. I have heard this of two old par- rots, upon the best authority. A. We have said nothing of fishes, or of any marine animals. 2?. Why, of these our knowledge is necessarily very limited. That they have remarkable Instincts, some of them resembling those of land animals, is certain. The Sepia, or cuttle-fish, ejecting a black or dark-brown fluid to facilitate his escape, resem- bles the stratagem of some beasts emitting an in- tolerable effluvia in the face of their pursuers. The Whale, when attacked by the Sword-fish, diving to such a depth that his enemy cannot sustain the pressure of the water, is another well- 124 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. known example of defensive action. I used to ob- serve with interest the wary cunning of the old Carp in the ponds here : there was no decoying them with bait, which the younger and less expe- rienced fish took at once. So little have men for- merly undervalued the faculties of fishes, that Plutarch wrote an ingenious treatise in the form of a dialogue, on the question whether land or water animals have the most understanding. A. How does he treat this odd question ? JB. Here is his book ; and certainly as far as the first portion of the subject goes, where the merits of land animals are concerned, he sails before the wind. To his first remark I willingly subscribe, that those hold the most stupid doctrine upon the subject (oi a(3eXrep(i)Q Xeyorreg) who say that ani- mals do not really fear, rejoice, remember, rage, <&c, but only do something like fearing, rejoicing, &c. (wcraveH fofieiaSai, &c. ); and he asks what such -reasoners would think were it also contended that animals do not see, but make as if they saw ; nor hear, but make as if they heard ; nor roar, but make as if they roared ; and, finally, do not live, but only did something like living. He then re- lates a great variety of facts respecting the sagacity of animals, some of them evidently fabulous (as the love of a dragon for a young woman), and some, as the account of the ant laying in grain, now proved to be erroneous ; but he gives others worthy of attending to. Thus, the contrivance of African crows, who, when the water was scarce, threw pebbles into deep cracks of the earth, so as to bring the fluid up towards the surface, and within their reach — the similar cunning of a dog on board of a vessel — the like device fallen upon by elephants FACTS. 125 to rescue one that had fallen into a pit — the astute- ness of the fox, used by the Thracians as a kind of guide in crossing a river frozen over, to find out whether the ice is thick enough, which the animal does by stopping and listening to hear if the water is running near the surface — the judicious mode of flight in which cranes and other birds of passage marshal themselves, forming a wedge-like body, with the strongest birds at the front angle or point. But when he comes to the other side of the question, and is to state the case for the fishes, we find a great falling off both in his facts and in his evidence. Beside telling very absurd stories about crocodiles in Egypt obeying the call of the priests and submitting to their influence, he dwells upon the Sepia, whose escape in a black cloud of his own making he compares to the tactics of Homer's gods ; upon the cunning shown by fishes in gnaw- ing lines to escape with the hook ; nay, upon a story he tells of their helping one another to escape when caught, which is plainly groundless ; upon the Torpedo, or electrical eel, giving shocks, which is clearly a mere physical quality, and no more in- dicates reason than the shark using his teeth ; upon shoals of fishes, like flocks of birds, forming them- selves into wedges when they move from one sea to another, which is certainly true ; upon the dolphin loving music, which is purely fabulous, as well as the feats of wisdom and philanthropy that he ascribes to this fish (/uovog yap avSpioirov aa-na- (erca ko.$o avSpuyiroQ eart) ; finally, upon all the fables to be found in the poets respecting this fish. After reciting one of these, by way of proving his case in favour of marine animals, he innocently enough says that although he had promised to 126 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. relate no fables, he now finds himself, he knows not how, in the company of Cseranus and Ulysses, and so he brings his notable argument to a close. A. How does he ultimately decide the question propounded ? B. With a verse of Sophocles, intimating that both sides have gained some advantage towards a common purpose ; but the victory is given to neither, the umpire pronouncing that both the ar- guments combined overthrow the doctrine of those who deny Reason and Intelligence to animals generally. A. There are no modern books which fully dis- cuss this subject systematically, either as regards Instinct or Intelligence. One is exceedingly dis- appointed in consulting our best writers, whether metaphysicians or naturalists, with this view ; and the omission is the less to be excused because there are great opportunities of observing and comparing : this branch of knowledge is eminently suited to inductive reasoning ; we live as it were among the facts, and have not only constant facilities for making our experiments, but are in some sort under a constant necessity of doing so. B. Truly it is as you say. I have often felt this disappointment and this disapprobation. The works of metaphysical writers contain a few scat- tered suggestions, or dogmas, and with these they leave the subject. Naturalists, who could throw so much light upon it, confine themselves chiefly to the structure and functions of the organs, and leave the mental part of the subject out of view. Yet a physiologist, who also applied himself to this latter branch of the inquiry, would be the person best qualified to grapple with its difficulties and to FACTS. 127 throw light upon it. Therefore I learnt with ex- treme satisfaction that an able and learned pro- fessor of Natural History had given a course of lectures upon it at Paris, and was still more gra- tified to find that he soon afterwards published them. I speak of M. Virey's work ; those two thick volumes lying there contain above a thousand pages on the Habits and Instinct of Animals ; and to raise my expectation still higher, it professes by its title to deal in facts — for it is called Histoire des Mceurs et de V Instinct des Animaux. A. Well ; I suppose you rushed upon it to slake your thirst ? B. As a traveller upon a delicious and copious spring, and found it a picture ; or upon a luscious- looking large peach, and found my mouth filled with chalk. I have had these volumes here these two years, and I can barely now say I have been able to get through them. They are throughout not only written in the very worst style of French sentimental declamation, but they avoid all pre- cision, all details, all facts, as something grovelling, common-place, and unimportant. The constant object is not to find out or illustrate some truth, to describe or arrange some phenomenon, but to say something pretty, far-fetched, and figurative. And all this with an arrangement of the classes of ani- mals so methodical, that on looking at the contents, and finding they proceed regularly from the struc- ture of the globe and the general qualities of its different products, to mammalia, then to birds, reptiles, fishes, and so downwards through the in- vertebrated animals, ending with zoophytes and mollusca, you naturally expect under each head to have what the title promises, a History of the 128 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. Habits and Instincts ; and find nothing of the kind from beginning to end, but only trope after trope, one piece of finery after another, nothing but vague declamation long drawn out, an endless succession of the most frivolous sentimentality. Truly such a work, from so learned a naturalist, one who could so well have instructed and entertained us, had he but chosen to be plain and didactic, instead of being brilliant and rhetorical, where all eloquence and ornament are absolutely misplaced, is no small offence in the literary world. A. I'll assure you our French neighbours are not the only sinners in this particular. I have been somewhat mortified of late years at perceiving a tendency to fine writing and declamation among our own men of science, and I ascribe it, in some degree, to the more general diffusion of scientific knowledge, which naturally introduces the more popular style of composition. Our Society of Useful Knowledge has no sins of this sort on its conscience, because we correct with unsparing severity all we publish ; but you may perceive the tendency of popular explication to run in this bad direction, from the kind of matter that is often submitted to us for revision. I am sure I sometimes draw my pen through half a page of fine writing at a time. B. I will engage for it you do inexorably when- ever you find such outrages. My experience is precisely the same ; and I am just as severe on those part's, evidently the prime favourites of the learned and very able writers. But we originally set out with firmly resolving to be most rigorous in matters of taste, being aware, as you say, of the tendencies of popular writers. In truth, however, that vile florid style darkens instead of illustrating ; FACTS. 129 and while we never can write too clearly to the people, we never can write too simply, if our de- sign be to write plainly and intelligibly. But though our Society is free from having any of this blame, I cannot quite acquit of all blame the meet- ings, however useful and praiseworthy in other respects, of an association which brings crowds of hundreds and thousands together, to hear ma- thematicians and chemists making declamatory speeches. I must say that those assemblages offer some violence to Science, at least they somewhat lower her by showing her cultivators trying a trade they no more can, or even ought to excel in, than poets in solving questions of fluxions. It is since these meetings, otherwise useful and excellent, rose into eloquence, that I have seen a mathematical discussion, by a very able and learned man, in two consecutive pages of which I reckoned up above twenty metaphors — all tending to darken the sub- ject — to say nothing of poetical quotations without any mercy. Formerly declamations were reckoned so little an accomplishment of scientific men, that when Bishop Horsley filled our Royal Society with a factious controversy, the ministerial side, Sir Joseph Banks's party, had to send for assistance — and where think you they went for an orator ? A. I suppose to some Nisi Prius advocate. B. Guess again. — No! — So humble were their views of oratory that they went to the other side of the hall, as the lawyers say, and got for their champion, Mr. Anguish, who was Accountant-Ge- neral, a Chancery man, and had perhaps made as few speeches as any one in that Court. But in the work which I have referred to, and even in those scientific meetings, there is at least much that is 130 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. highly valuable, much good grain, and the trash may be rejected as chaff- — whereas, in this piece of French declamation all is chaff, and hardly a grain can be gleaned out of the light and worth- less matter. A. Can you find nothing by sifting and bolting it? I generally find something even in the worst books. S. I will not say that these heavy volumes of light matter contain absolutely nothing ; but won- drous little assuredly they have to reward the pains of searching. What can be more hateful than a man of science unable to speak of granivorous ani- mals without terming them Pythagoreans and Gym- nosophists ; calling the crying baboon of South America a wild Demosthenes, the lion a generous prince, the jackal a courtier; describing the nightingale as appealing to Heaven against the robber of her nest, and the crocodiles as the " sad orphans of nature," because hatched in the sand ; nay, carrying his ridiculous fancies into actual practice, seriously explaining the mild temper of one animal by the sweetness of its humours, and the ferocity of another by the acrid juices of its system — all a pure fiction in fact, as well as a gross absurdity in theory ! Then mark the consistency of a philosopher — a consistency worthy of the ve- riest mob. He denounces, as the most atrocious of men, the experimenter on a living dog or rab- bit, Fontana, or Majendie, I suppose, and after- wards speaks with the utmost composure of divid- ing a bee in two, in order to examine her honey- bag. Of the bee, indeed, he seems very mode- rately informed. He speaks of Aristarchus having devoted his life to the study of this insect, instead of Aristomachus ; assumes to be true the notion FACTS. 131 long exploded of honey being- collected from flow- ers, instead of a secretion in the stomach ; will not believe that wax, too, is a secretion, though he refers unconsciously to Huber's experiment of ob- taining it from bees feeding upon sugar and water ; and, to set off his modern natural history with a little false classical lore, must needs call the cells " their citadel, or the palladium of their republic." A. Bad enough in all conscience. But now give us the grain or two of wheat in all this bushel of chaff. JB. First, and this makes it more provoking, the author writes clearly and admirably when he chooses to leave off declaiming. There is a long note upon vertebrated and invertebrated animals s showing with much clearness and precision that in the former, which have a cerebral and nervous system, Intelligence prevails ; in the latter, Instinct. He maintains the specific difference of Instinct and Season or Intelligence with great force and clear- ness; indeed, there seems nothing to find fault with in his statements here, except that he places the seat of Intelligence in the cerebral nervous system, and of Instinct in the ganglionic, and thus is forced to deny Intelligence altogether to insects, whereas we have seen that Huber's observations plainly show the bee to have the capacity of vary- ing its means in accomplishing the end in view when the circumstances vary ; and this surely can- not be distinguished from Intelligence. Also he discusses, with perfect strictness of reasoning, the hypothesis of a very celebrated naturalist, no less than M. Lamarck, and, I must say, refutes veiy satisfactorily the theory of my most learned and worthy colleague, for whom we all must feel the 132 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. most profound respect. He had been induced to suppose that Instinct results from the habits origi- nally acquired by animals adapted to the circum- stances in which they found themselves placed at the beginning of the creation, and that these habits occasioned an adaptation of their structure to par- ticular operations, as well as a constant capacity and desire to perform them. Now, my only ob- jection to M. Virey's refutation of this theory, which is merely the exploded doctrine of appe- tencies in a new form, is, that it requires no such elaborate answer to overthrow it. For what do we see in all nature which in the least entitles us to suppose any animal at any period to have had the power of altering his bodily structure, cre- ating one part and altering another according to his wants ? Besides, if animals, at their first cre- ation, had so much power and so much intelligence as this theory supposes, why should this all cease and leave them only possessed of blind Instincts now? The reasoning, however, of M. Virey is sound, and does much credit to his acuteness. A. But have you found, in his volumes, no facts; nothing to place among the phenomena which we are collecting previous to resuming our discussion respecting the faculties of brutes ? B. Very little ; and that so wrapped up in de- clamation, and so disfigured with figures (if I may thus speak), that there is no small difficulty in seizing hold of it. What he says of the archi- tecture of squirrels, marmots, rats, and some other rodents, is new to me. I had only been aware of the beaver, among this tribe, as remarkable for in- genuity. But it seems these others excel all animals in digging subterranean dwellings ; they make com- 13; partments or chambers, which they line with clay, and cover with a roof from the weather ; in some of these chambers they stow vegetables, which they previously dry in the sun ; others they use for the reception of their young ; in others they sleep. He brings together some curious instances of swift and long-sustained nights of birds. Thus the smallest bird, he says, can fly several leagues in an hour ; the hawk goes commonly at the rate of a league in four minutes, or above forty miles an hour. A falcon of Henry II. was flown from Fon- tainebleau, and found, by its ring, at Malta next day. One, sent from the Canaries to Andalusia, returned to TenerifFe in sixteen hours, a distance of nearly seven hundred miles, which it must have gone at the average rate of twenty-four miles an hour. Gulls go seven hundred miles out to sea and return daily ; and Frigate-birds have been found at twelve hundred miles from any land. Upon their migra- tion he states, as a known fact, that Cranes go and return at the same date, without the least regard to the state of the weather, which shows, no doubt, if true, a most peculiar instinct; but these, and, indeed, all facts which we find stated by a writer so addicted to painting and colouring, must be re- ceived with a degree of suspicion, for which no one but M. Virey is to be blamed. The accounts, however, of the swiftness of birds, I can well credit, from an experiment which I made when travelling on a railway. While going at the rate of thirty miles an hour, I let fly a bee ; it made its circles as usual, and surrounded us easily. Now, if there was no current of air or draught to bear it along, this indicated a rate of ninety miles an hour •; and even allowing for a current, the swiftness must G 134 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. have been great. I should, however, wish to re- peat this experiment before being quite sure of so great a swiftness in so small an insect. A. Have you given all your gleanings from this work? B. I should, perhaps, add these two. We find in it a curious passage from an old Spanish author of the seventeenth century, giving a quaint and lively account of the sagacity of the beggars' dogs at Rome ; and we also find the titles of some German works on the faculties of brutes, which are truly curious, and show how great a degree of attention that laborious people have paid to the subject, but, at the same time, betray not a little of the characteristic boldness and enthusiasm of their speculations. A. I conclude you have never seen more than these titles in this book ? B. Never ; and I really should wish to see the works themselves. One is Mayer de peccatis et pcenis Brutorum, 1686, in quarto. Another, in 1725, Hermanson de peccatis Brutorum; this, however, is printed at Upsal. A third is Schrceder de Simulacris virtutum in Brutis Animantibus y 1691 ; and a fourth, Schrceder de Brutorum JReli- gione, 1702. Then, it appears that one Drechsler wrote, in 1672, a Dissertation on the Speech of Animals, and Meyer and Martin, not to be out- done, followed this up a few years after, the one with a Treatise on the Logic of Animals, and an- other with one Be Animalium Syllogismo. A. Does the Spaniard give any curious particu- lars of dogs ? B. Not perhaps any that surpass what we have been stating from facts known among ourselves. FACTS. 135 But his account is diverting enough. " The blind- man's dog," says he, " will take him to the places where he may best hope to get his alms, and bring him thither through the crowd by the shortest way and the safest ; nay, he will take him out of the city some miles to the great church of St. Paul, as you go to Ostia. When in the town he cometh to a place where several ways meet, and with the sharpness of ear that the blind have, guided by- some sound of a fountain, he gives the string a jerk by either hand, straightway will the poor dog turn and guide him to the very church where he knows his master would beg. In the street, too, knoweth he the charitably-disposed houses that be therein, and will lead thither the beggar-man, who, stopping at one, saith his pater-noster ; then down lieth the dog till he hear the last word of the beadsman, when straight he riseth and away to an- other house. I have seen myself, to my great joy, mingled with admiration, when a piece of money- was thrown down from some window, the dog would run and pick it up and fetch it to the master's hat ; nor, when bread is flung down, will he touch it be he ever so hungry, but bring it to his master, and wait till he may have his share given him. A friend of mine was wont to come to my dwelling with a great mastiff, which he left by the door on entering ; but he, seeing that his master had entered after drawing the string of the bell, would needs do likewise, and so made those within open the door, as though some one should have rung thereat." A. Upon my word, you have been amusing yourself with making the old Castilian speak in old English. — But now, I think, we may be said to g2 136 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. have gone at sufficient length into the facts, and to have gathered together a collection large enough for our purposes of speculation — nor have we per- haps much more to do with this in that way. For can any one rationally doubt that they evince in these brutes some faculties at least approaching in kind to our own — nay, and to such of our own as we are wont to prize the most, and to be the proudest of? No blind impulse of a mechanical kind, no mere instinct, or feeling, or operative principle, apart from knowledge, experience, learn- ing, even intention, — can surely account for the things we have just been considering as done by animals — and one example, and an ordinary one, is as good as a thousand. The cat opening a door from observing men do so before it ; or the bird, from its own observation of the effect produced by solid bodies, sunk in water, raising the water by throwing in pebbles ; or letting muscles fall to break the shells — these things surely argue a think- ing and a reasoning process. B. There seems little doubt of this ; however, we may perhaps adjourn the further discussion, as we no longer require to be among our books, but may take our walk out in the sun, which is far from disagreeably hot to-day. A. I have no kind of objection, and will meet you on the Terrace as soon as I have written my letters. ( 137 ) BOOK OR DIALOGUE IV. ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE.— (Theory.) We accordingly finished our letters, and prepared to go out and walk about in the sunny exposure, which a north-west wind made agreeable, as in the north it often does, even at this season — " calceis et vestimentis sumptis, placitum est ut in aprico maxime patente loco conveniremus :*" — where, as we walked about, he began in continuation of his last remark. A. I know not why so much unwillingness should be shown by some excellent philosophers to allow intelligent faculties, and a share of reason, to the lower animals, as if our own superiority was not quite sufficiently established, to leave all question of jealousy out of view, by the immeasurably higher place which we occupy in the scale of being, even should we admit the difference to be in degree rather than in kind ; because when the difference of degree becomes so vast, there is hardly any more chance of encroachment or confusion, hardly any more likeness or comparison, than if the difference were radical and in kind. Some writers, as D. Stewart, really seem to treat the question as one of an exciting nature, and almost to regard the purity * " Having taken our boots and greatcoats, ve chose to meet in an open and sunny exposure. " — Cic. De Repub. lib. i. cap. 12. 138 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. of religious belief as involved in the controversy. How is this, and why should it be ? B. It is possible that the origin of the feelings shown by those good and able men, resembles that of Descartes' absurd theory, of brutes being like machines, which, as far as he holds it. he avows to have proceeded from the notion that unless they are so, their souls would be immortal. But another reason may be assigned. The scepti- cal, or free-thinking, philosophers always lowered human nature as much as possible. They regarded it as something gained to their arguments against religious belief, if they could show the difference to be slighter than is supposed between men and brutes ; and that there is a chain of being from the plant, nay almost from inorganic matter, up to man. They seem to have had a confused idea that this helped them even to account for the constitu- tion of the universe, " without the hypothesis of a Deity," as Laplace is said to have termed it when Napoleon questioned him on the remarkable omis- sion in the 'Mecanique Celeste/ Thus much is certain in point of fact, that those philosophers, and especially the French school, were fond of lowering the human intellect by raising that of animals ; and while the priests were lavish of their admission that our moral nature is utterly corrupt but claimed for our intellectual capacity to be only a little lower than the angels, the society of the Encyclopedic, and the coterie of Baron d'Holbach were fond of levelling the intellectual distinction between immortal and confessedly mortal beings, though they denied the moral depravity of their race with perhaps no very strict regard either to the evidence of their consciousness or of their THEORY. 139 observation. It thus appears that this theory of a difference in kind is found in company with that of scepticism, just as some other theories are usually coupled with it also; for example, the selfish system, — philosophical necessity, — expediency, — materialism, — all of which are held by Hume, Voltaire, Helvetius, Diderot, and other free- thinkers ; yet all of which are also held by some as determined believers as any that are to be found in any church. Priestley, for instance, held all these doctrines, and Paley all but the last. Hume's opinion on the reason of brutes cannot be doubted from some accidental remarks interspersed in his writings. Helvetius, a materialist and sceptic both, has explicitly stated that if the arm of man had chanced to terminate in the foot of a horse, he would still have been found wandering about as the tenant of the woods.* The company in which the opinion has been found has thus greatly dis- inclined pious men towards it. Professor Robinson, in his attacks on the French school, is nowhere more severe upon them than where he impeaches them of endeavouring to lower the dignity of human nature,f and undoubtedly such attempts may be made in a manner to hurt the interests both of religion and of morals. A. Has not Lord Monboddo given great offence of the same kind, and in the same quarters ? B. Possibly he has ; although from his station as a judge, and a man of most loyal political opinions, and also from his being an orthodox believer, at least as far as professions go, he has been less blamed than the rest. He was an admirable Grecian, such as in modern times Scotland has very rarely pro- * Del'Esprit. f Proofs of a Conspiracy. 140 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. duced ; ?tiid there is an infinite deal of ingenuity and subtlety as well as learning in his writings, with a constant display of most correct taste in judging of the ancient controversies. But his theory has subjected him to great ridicule, not so much from his holding that there is a gradation in the whole scale of beings, and that the mental faculties of man are found in the minds of brutes, as from his denying any specific difference even in body ; and holding that originally men were fashioned like monkeys, and lived like them wild and savage. A. I could much more readily understand this doctrine giving offence and scandal as heterodox, than the other ; for it seems not very easily recon- cilable either to our religion or indeed to almost any other received among civilized nations. B. 1 consider it a thing just as little supported by the facts, as it is repugnant to all known systems of theology. But my objection to it is really not founded upon its tendency to lower human nature. On the contrary, I doubt if it does not rather exalt our faculties beyond all the ordinary doctrines, and draw a broader line of distinction between us and the lower animals than that which it was intended to efface. For surely if we have not only by our intelligence made the great progress from a rude to a refined state — from the New Zealander to Laplace, and Newton, and Lagrange — but have also, by the help of the same faculties, made the progress from the state of monkeys and baboons, while all other animals are the same from one generation to another, and have made not a single step for sixty centuries, and never have attempted in a single instance to store up for after-times the THEORY. 141 experience of a former age, our faculties must needs be immeasurably superior to theirs. In short, the only question is as to the nature of the dif- ference. A. I can well suppose a difference merely in degree sufficient to explain any diversity of condi- tion or result. We have only to compare indi- dual men together to perceive this. It is admitted that reason, nay, that the power of forming abstract ideas, as well as drawing inferences from premises, is possessed by persons whom yet you shall in vain attempt to teach the simplest mathematical demonstration. Then their faculties only differ in degree from those by which Pascal learnt geometry without a master or a book, and Newton discovered Fluxions, and Lagrange and Euler the Calculus of Variations. It may truly be said, that there is no difference in kind which could make a greater diversity in the result. B. It may indeed be truly so said ; but it may also be added, that there is not a greater difference, call it in kind or in degree, between the person whose obtuseness you have supposed, and a saga- cious retriever, or a clever ape, than between the great mathematicians you have named, and that same person. Locke, whose calmness of under- standing was equal to his sagacity, and never allowed. his judgment to be warped by prejudice, or carried away by fancy and feelings, seems to have held this opinion, and indeed to have allowed some reason to animals. "There are some brutes," he observes, " that seem to have as much knowledge and reason as some that are called men ;" and he goes on to say that there is such a connexion between the animal and the vegetable kingdom, g3 142 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. as makes the difference scarcely perceptible be- tween the lowest of the one and the highest of the other. A. You quoted Addison's paper upon Instinct yesterday, in proof of his taking the Newtonian view of the subject. What does he say as to the Keason, and generally the Intelligent faculties, of animals ? 23. He is, as you are aware, no very great reasoner ; insomuch, indeed, that I have known persons made converts to Deism, or rather from Christianity, by reading his most feeble treatise on the Evidences. One man of great virtue, learning, and ability confessed as much to me. Accordingly, he is very wavering and inconsistent on this subject also, and encounters it with prejudice. At one place he says, reason cannot be the cause of brutes acting as they do ; and then, after seeming to deny it, he only adds a kind of admission that they have reason : " for," says he, " were animals endued with it to as great a degree as man," &c. And again, in the same paper, he seems to deny it altogether. " One would wonder to hear," he says, " sceptical men disputing for the reason of animals, and telling us it is only our pride and prejudices that will not allow them the use of that faculty." This is exactly the notion to which I was a little while ago imputing the unwillingness of so many reasoners to allow brutes their fair share of intel- ligence. You see Addison considers it the natural course of a sceptic ; yet surely Locke was as firm a believer as himself, and certainly a far more reflecting and intelligent one. A. Perhaps we had as well consider, before going into the question, by what kind of logic the THEORY. 143 argument is to be conducted, by what sort of evi- dence we are to try the cause. B. I presume there can be no doubt here. We must examine it according to the rules of inductive science. The facts are before us. Some we gather from observation — those relating to animals ; some, as those respecting the nature of the human mind, we ascertain by our own consciousness, or at least chiefly by that, though in some sort also by ob- serving other men's conduct, and communicating with them ; but having no means of communicat- ing with animals, we are reduced to our observa- tion merely ; and then we naturally draw the in- ference that, because the same things done by our- selves would be known by us to be done from certain mental powers, therefore we ascribe those powers to the animals. This conclusion as to our- selves is certain, because we know and feel it to be so by our own consciousness. With respect to animals it is not nearly so certain, because we can- not either enter into their minds, as we do into our own, or communicate with them, as we do with our fellow-men. Nevertheless, by varying our ob- servations on . them, by making experiments on their faculties, by placing them in new and arbi- trary combinations of circumstances, we can reduce the chances of error to a very small amount, and render our inferences as highly probable as most of the propositions of contingent truth are. A. It is not, however, necessary that we should now go into an investigation of the nature of the human faculties. Our researches are in their na- ture comparative only. B. Certainly ; and therefore, agreeing with you, I would begin by laying down this position, that 144 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. all we have to do is to grant or to deny the exist- ence of certain mental faculties, and to ascertain the meaning of the terms which we employ in ex- pressing these. Whatever those faculties may be in us, all we are now to consider is, whether or not the brutes have the same, or in any degree. A. I think it quite right and really for our safety, in conducting the inquiry, to lay down a second preliminary principle or caution, namely, that we have no right to argue from the mere effects produced by certain endowments, or by any given combination or modification of these. Thus, when we see what has been achieved by man, and contemplate the extraordinary monuments raised by his industry, his activity, and his intelligence, and the power which he has acquired over the operations of nature, and of all other animals, pro- fiting so largely by both, and when we compare this with the feeble state of those animals, their having no accumulation of either knowledge or possessions, and gained nothing upon man or by man, we are drawing a contrast which really proves nothing ; because it is just as easily accounted for by supposing the two classes extremely different in degree, as by assuming that they differ in the kind of their faculties. Thus to take a common instance, and one which Adam Smith himself gives as mark- ing a great difference between us and the brutes, they have no appearance of barter ; but if barter arises from comparing ideas together, and forming a conclusion from the premises, and if, from other facts, animals appear to possess that power, there being no positive barter only shows that their judg- ment or reasoning faculties are weaker than ours, or that for some other reason, it is immaterial to THEORY. 145 the argument what, they have not acquired that particular result of the reasoning faculty. B. I entirely agree in this general position, hold- ing that the neglect of it has been one main cause of the errors into which philosophers have fallen on this question ; I must, however, doubt the correct- ness of the position, that the brutes are wholly igno- rant of barter. No one, as Smith says, ever saw one dog barter a bone with another. But many of the operations of both dogs and horses in dividing their labour, and of insects, as ants, in helping each other, seem referable to a principle not to be easily distinguished from barter. The division of labour is clearly to be observed among them. Of course I do not mean that comminute division by which bees work together, and in which they incalculably excel ourselves ; for that we have classed as in- stinctive and unintentional, and therefore it cannot enter into our present argument. But horses plainly help one another in drawing, and take different parts of the work ; so do dogs in the chace. How- ever, to leave no doubt about it, and allowing beavers to act instinctively, the wild horses sleep- ing and watching by turns is a clear and unequivo- cal instance of the division of labour. But I admit your position — that if anything which is the result of a faculty, proved already to be one of the ani- mal mind, is not possessed by them, this is no ar- gument against their having that faculty. It may lead us to be the more cautious in examining the proofs by which their possession of the faculty is established : but that is all. Indeed, such distinc- tions are taken upon no more philosophical ground than he \v 7 ould have for his classification who should make two divisions of metals or of Avater. one the 146 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. solid, and another the fluid, accordingly as they had different temperatures, A. I hold it to be a part of the same prelimi- nary position, that if brutes are shown to possess any given simple faculties, their not having the power of doing things only to be accomplished by combinations of these simple powers, does not im- peach the proposition, already established, of their having those simple powers. For it would only show that they have not the combination, though they may have the separate powers. Does any other proposition occur to you as convenient to be laid down in the outset ? B. I should say this, which is perhaps rather a corollary from the last, that we must carefully dis- tinguish between simple and composite faculties, as they are called. Indeed, I deny the accuracy of this form of speech, and I believe it tends much to error in metaphysical speculations. No system of psychology, ancient or modern, sanctions it ; neither those of Hartley, Priestley, Berkeley, nor that of Reid and Stewart and Brown, although I think it has been much encouraged by the speculations of these last, and their separate treatment of our men- tal powers under distinct heads, how necessary soever this was for the elucidation of the subject. The mind being one, and entire, and invariable, without parts or composition, acts always as one being. It recollects, praises, judges, abstracts, imagines ; and when you say that it exercises a compound, or complex, or composite faculty, as for example, the imagination, you only mean that it first exerts one faculty, then another, and then a third. We never should call the process by which chemists bleach vegetable substances a composite THEORY. 147 operation, because they first make oxymuriatic gas, then mix lime with water, then, by agitation of the water exposed to the gas, cause lime to com- bine, and then expose the vegetable fibre to this compound liquor ; we say that these are so many successive operations performed, and not one com- plex operation. And so imagination is not one compound faculty, nor is imagining one complex operation of the mind. But that mind in succes- sion remembers, abstracts, judges or compares ideas, and reasons or compares judgments — and the whole four successive operations form imagination ; to which you may add the further operation of taste, which, rejecting one and selecting other results of imagination, produces the fruits of refined or purified fancy ; if indeed this taste itself be any- thing but a sound exercise of judgment — a judg- ment refined by experience, that is, by constant attention to what is pleasing, and what disagreeable. The rapidity with which all these separate opera- tions are performed by the mind, neither prevents them from being in succession and separately per- formed, nor at all shows the mind to have composi- tion or parts. Giving names to certain combina- tions, or rather successions of operations, and not to others, may be correct ; but it must be admitted is somewhat capricious. We talk of imagination as if it were one operation, though it is many ; and yet we give no separate name to several other suc- cessions as rapid of our mental operations. So as to our moral feelings. We speak of conscience as one ; yet it is, as Smith describes it, a succession (he says a compound) of several, among which pity for the party injured, and fear of the consequences to ourselves, are the chief. Yet we give no name 148 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. to the reflection on past enjoyments, which is as quick a succession of several emotions, — namely, recollection, comparison of the present, and sorrow- ing for the contrast. However, as regards our pre- sent purpose, the simplest part of the proposition is, that any given simple faculty or single operation of the mind being found to be possessed by animals, the circumstance of their not possessing the com- pound exclusively, or several combined, or a suc- cessive operation of different faculties, is no proof against their having the simple ones. Thus, if they have no fancy, it is no proof that they have no memory or judgment ; because they may have these without having abstraction, which is one of the faculties that go to make the imaginative process. But it is also no proof of their being without ab- straction, and all the other simple or single facul- ties ; for it only proves that they have not the power of using these faculties together, or rather in quick succession, and for the same joint purpose. And should they have the simple or single, without having the compound faculties or processes, this would again argue no specific difference, but rather a diversity of degree. A. I think these preliminary positions not only have cleared the ground for us, but helped us a good way on our journey. There appears hardly much more to reason about now. The subject has been a good deal enveloped in mist and smoke, from confusion of ideas, and from prejudice and high feeling. These being blown away, it seems pretty clear what the structure is that we are to examine. B. Before going to the brute faculties, let us just cast a glance over the faculties which have been enumerated as belonging to ourselves, and THEORY. 149 see if they should not be a little simplified — Sensa- tion, Perception, Consciousness, Memory, Abstrac- tion, Imagination, Judgment, Reasoning, to which have been added Taste and the Moral Sense ; and Mr. Stewart thinks these not enough, adding among others, the power of connecting general or abstract signs with the things signified. Now suppose we admit the correctness of calling a state of mind in which it is purely passive an active power or faculty, as Sensation, which is merely the effect produced upon the mind by the operation of the senses, and involves nothing like an exertion of the mind itself, any more than receiving a hurt or a gratification passively is any exertion of the body, although the operation whereby that reaches the mind may be termed bodily exertion ; then it will follow, and not otherwise, that Sensation is a faculty. But Perception is no doubt an active exertion of the mind. Memory differs from Recollection as Sensa- tion does from Perception. The state of mind in which one idea calls up another, or a present state of mind influenced by a past state, is Memory. The exertion by which the mind voluntarily in- duces the present state from the past, is Recollec- tion. The one is the sensation, the other the 'perception of the past, as sensation and perception are of the present. A. Is not Perception an inference from Sensa- tion ? I have the sensation of solidity or of smell, and I perceive either the solid, resisting body, and the odorous body, or I perceive the solid or odorous quality, that is, I infer a being from the sensation, or I infer a quality ; the former seems a simple in- ference, the latter an inference coupled with an abstraction. 150 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. B. I do not incline altogether to this opinion ; but at any rate it will not apply to Memory and Re- collection ; for Recollection is not an inference from Memory ; it is an effort by which the mind throws itself into the state into which it might have been brought by the former ideas recurring of them- selves. In Perception we do not voluntarily throw the mind into the state of Sensation ; we draw an inference from that sensation according to your theory. But I think it pretty clear that there is something between the sensation and the inference — the simple apprehension and the conclusion drawn. The latter is clearly an inference that an external being exists which created the sensation and the perception. But I think there is also a perception upon the sensation, and which cannot certainly exist without it. However, be this as it may, to our present purpose it makes no difference, except as far as there can be no doubt of the mind being in a much more passive state in the two con- ditions of feeling and remembering than in the other two of recollecting and perceiving. A. Then of Imagination we have already dis- posed. It consists of the successive, though rapidly succeeding operations of other faculties whereby we create or combine new ideas that had no previous existence, abstracting the qualities of one object to clothe another with them. But Abstraction we may allow to be a simple operation and one of the most important. What do you make of two that I do not remember you to have named, Attention and Conception ? B. I omitted them purposely. I can see really nothing in Attention but the degree in which cer- tain other faculties operate. It is only the inten- THEOItY. 151 sity with which I perceive. Possibly there may be some good from considering it as the difference between Perception and Sensation : in the latter case the mind passively receives the impression of the senses; in the former it fixes itself steadily upon those impressions, so as to feel them by a voluntary effort more acutely. As for Conception, which used formerly to be called Simple Apprehension, it is only the forming ideas of objects neither pre- sented by the senses nor by the imagination ; and I am unable to separate it from Memory and from Abstraction — from memory as far as it deals with former ideas, from abstraction as far as it deals with quality apart from the objects remembered or ima- gined. A. Then Judgment being the comparison of ideas, and Reasoning the comparison of judgments, that is, of the ideas arising from the former compa- rison, may be set down as one faculty — that of Comparing — and I conclude you make quick work with Taste and the Moral Sense, of which the one gives us preferences among objects of mental gra- tification, and the other among objects of moral approbation ? B. They are both evidently exercises of the judging and reasoning powers, — say the comparing powers, according to two standards, — the one the sense of beauty or fitness, of what is pleasing or agreeable ; the other, the sense of what is just and right. But whether this last sense is natural or acquired, and how acquired, is a question that has long divided philosophers, and which will very certainly never be determined. Nor is it more easy to determine the other, which is quite a kin- dred one, how it is that our taste is formed, and 152 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. whether it be natural or acquired. All that we can say on this subject is, to remark the little prac- tical importance which belongs to either question, and to state that, as far as our present discussion is concerned, the only faculty involved in either the one or the other is that by which we compare dif- ferent ideas. A. Our enumeration then of mental faculties seems to resolve into Perception, active or passive ; Memory, active or passive ; Consciousness, Abstrac- tion, and Comparison ; then how do we place ani- mals as to the first ? IB. Clearly no animal, nothing having life, can be conceived to exist, without Passive Perception at all events, and hardly any without Active Per- ception also. Consciousness too seems a necessary quality of every mind ; it is the knowing one's own existence ; so Memory of the passive kind must exist in every mind ; without Consciousness and Memory no animal could know its own personal identity ; and no acts could be done by it upon the supposition of that identity. "With respect to Ac- tive Memory and Conception, if this is to be held a separate faculty, it is implied in Comparison, or in judgment and reasoning ; so that our inquiries come to be confined within sufficiently narrow limits. Do the lower animals possess Abstraction and Comparison ? I will at once begin with Ab- straction, because it is the power most generally denied to brutes; and this arises, as I conceive., from an ill-grounded notion of its nature, and from a supposition that it is a faculty of a far more re- fined nature, subservient to operations of a much more difficult kind, than the truth will warrant us in affirming. The truth appears to be, that there THEOHY. 153 are, if not two kinds of Abstraction, an active and a passive, yet certainly some degrees of Abstraction so easy and even unavoidable, that we can hardly conceive almost any mind incapable of forming them. But on the other hand, the very highest and most difficultly attained reach of human thought is connected with Abstraction. Observing this, philosophers have passed all under one name, and because the brutes could not conduct algebraical investigations or metaphysical reasonings, have denied them all power whatever of forming abstract ideas. i. To a certain degree this is no doubt true. The abstraction by which we reason upon m and n or x as only numbers ; deal with x the unMiown quantity, multiplying it and speaking of m times x, or dividing it and speaking of one n th part of x, is no doubt a high and refined reach of thought ; but so is the forming to ourselves an idea of ab- stract qualities ; indeed I know not if, when we reason about m and x, we do more than mecha- nically deal with the letters ; whereas in reasoning of colour or smell as abstracted from the rose with which we always have seen them conjoined, and forming to ourselves the idea of something in the abstract which we have only ever seen in the con- crete, — of some i,deal existence of which in actual existence we have never known anything, nor can know, — we really appear to go a step further. Now do you maintain that Abstraction is ever otherwise than a difficult and painful operation ? JB. First of all be pleased to observe that many philosophers altogether deny, even to man, the power of forming abstract ideas. The dispute of the Nominalists and Realists, so well ridiculed by Swift, or rather by Arbuthnot in Scriblerus, is as 154 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. old as metaphysical inquiries, under one name or another. They consider it impossible for us really to form these abstractions, and hold that we only are using words and not dealing with ideas, just as you seem to think we do in algebraical language. Mr. Stewart is among those who conceive that we think in language. My opinion, if against such venerable authority I may venture to hold one, is different. I think we have ideas^ndependent of language, and I do not see how otherwise a person born deaf and dumb and blind can have ideas at all; which I know they have, because I carefully ex- amined the one of whom Mr. Stewart has given so interesting an account. Indeed he has recorded the experiment of the musical snuff-box which I then made upon this unhappy but singular boy. But next I am to show you that abstraction indepen- dent of algebra, or metaphysical reasoning altoge- ther, is neither difficult nor painful. Without Abstraction we cannot classify in any way, or make any approach to classification. Now I venture to say that no human being, be he ever so stupid, is without some power of classification, nay, that he is constantly exercising it with great care, and al- most unavoidably, and acting upon the inferences to which it leads. He can tell a man from a horse. How ? By attending to those things in which they differ. But he can also tell a stone from both, and he knows that the stone is different from both. How ? By attending to those things in which the two animals agree, and to those things in which they differ from the stone. So every person having accurate eyes and the use of speech can call a sheet of paper and a patch of snow both white ; a piece of hot iron and of hot brick both hot. He has therefore the idea in his mind of colour arid of heat THEORY. 155 in these several cases, independent of other quali- ties, that is, abstracted from other qualities ; he classifies the white bodies together, independent of their differences; the hot bodies, independent of theirs ; and he contrasts the white metal with the white snow, because they differ in temperature,with- out regarding their agreeing together in colour. All this is Abstraction, and all this is quite level to the meanest capacity of men. But is it not also level to brute intellect ? Unquestionably all animals know their mates and their own kind. A dog knows his master, knows that he is not a dog, and that he differs from other men. In these very ordi nary operations we see the animal mind at one time passing over certain resemblances and fixing on differences ; at another time disregarding differ- ences and fixing only on resemblances. Nay, go lower in the scale. A bull is enraged by a red colour, be the form of the body what you please. A fish is caught by means of a light, be it of any size or any form . A. These things which you last mention are mere sensations. The red light or the flame im- presses the retina and affects the animal's senso- rium, his brain — irritating the quadruped, and at- tracting the fish. B. What then ? Other sensations pass to his mind through his senses at the same time. He has the sensation of form as well a§. colour ; yet he passes this entirely over, and only considers the colour. However, take those cases in which ani- mals are attracted to certain places. They are hungry and go to a certain field to eat, without the least regard to its position or its shape ; because it agrees with other fields in bearing the food which J 56 THEORY. the beast is in quest of. Flies approach the light because they believe it to be the open air where they wish to go. So the bird never throws stones into a river or puddle to raise the water; but it does throw them into the ewer. It abstracts water from the thing containing it; and could not reason upon the effects of the operation with- out a process of Abstraction. Indeed, upon the footing on which you would put it, I know not that all our own abstract ideas may not in the end be resolved into sensations and their immediate consequences. I know of no evidence that you have of our abstract ideas being formed in any other way, except on our consciousness, and our conti- nual communication of ideas and experience through speech. In the case of the brute we have all the same phenomena, and, excluding the operation of blind Instinct, we are forced to the like conclusions. A. I think we may go a step further ; have not animals some kind of language? At all events they understand ours. A horse knows the en- couraging or chiding sound of voice and whip, and moves or stops accordingly. Whoever uses the sound, and in whatever key or loudness, the horse acts alike. But they seem also to have gome know- ledge of conventional signs. If I am to teach a dog or a pig to do certain things on a given signal, the process I take to be this. I connect his obedience with reward, his disobedience with punishment. But this only gives him the motive to obey, the fear of disobeying. It in no way can give him the means of connecting the act with the sign. Now connecting the two together, whatever be the man- ner in which the sign is made, is Abstraction ; but it is more, it is the very kind of Abstraction in THEORY. 157 which all language has its origin — the connecting the sign with the thing signified ; for the sign is purely arbitrary in this case as much as in human language. B. May we not add that they have some con- ventional signs among themselves ? How else are we to explain their calls ? The cock grouse calls the hen ; the male the female of many animals. The pigeon and the fieldfare and the crow make signals ; and the wild horse is a clear case of sig- nals. All this implies not only Abstraction, but that very kind of Abstraction which gives us our language. It is in fact a language which they pos- sess, though simple and limited in its range. A. As to the power of comparing, what is com- monly called Reason, par excellence, comprising Judgment and Reasoning, this needs not detain us very long. The facts here are not well liable to dispute. There is no possibility of explaining the many cases which we began by going over without allowing this power. They all prove it in some degree. Several of them show it to exist in a very considerable degree. The acts of some birds and monkeys cannot be accounted for by Instinct ; for they are the result of experience; and they are performed with a perfect knowledge of the end in view ; they are directed peculiarly to that end ; they vary according as the circumstances in which they are performed alter, and the alteration made is always so contrived as to suit the variation in the circumstances. Some of these acts show more sa- gacity, according to Mr. Locke's observation, than is possessed by many men. The existence of a comparing and contriving power is therefore plain enough. And on the whole I conceive that a ra- 158 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. tional mind cannot be denied to the animals, how- ever inferior in degree their faculties may be to oar own. B. That inferiority is manifestly the cause why they have made so little progress, or rather have hardly made any at all. Some little is proved by such facts as Mr. Knight has collected, but they are only exceptions to the rule which has doomed them to a stationary existence. This difference, however, is merely the result of the inferior degree of their mental powers, as well as the different con- struction of their bodily powers. The want of fingers endowed with a nice sense of touch is an ob- struction to the progress of all, or almost all, the lower animals. The elephant's trunk is no doubt a partial exception, and accordingly his sagacity is greater than that of almost any other beast. The monkey would have a better chance of learning the nature of external objects if his thumb were not on the same side of his hand with his fingers, whereby he cannot handle and measure objects as we do, whose chief knowledge of size and form is derived from the goniometer of the finger and thumb, the moveable angle which their motion and position give us. Insects work with infinite nicety by means of their antennae ; when these are removed they cease to work at all, as Huber clearly proved. Clearly this different external conformation, to- gether with their inferior degree of reason, is suffi- cient to account for brutes having been statioiLry, and for their being subdued to our use, as the Deity intended they should, when He appointed this dif- ference. To argue from the complex effect of all the faculties, bodily and mental, in giving different progress or power to our race and to theirs, and to THEORY. 159 infer from this difference that there is an essential and specific diversity in our mental structure, nay that they have not one single faculty the same with ours in kind, is highly unphilosophical. Lt is in- deed contrary to one of the fundamental rules of philosophizing, that which forbids us needlessly to multiply causes. For we are thus driven to sup- pose two kinds of Intelligence, human and brutal, and two sets of faculties, a Memory and a Quasi Memory, as the lawyers would have it — an Abs- traction and Reasoning, properly so called, and something in the nature of Abstraction and Rea- soning, but, though like, yet not the same. A. There is one matter to which we have not as yet adverted, but, after having considered the intel- ligent as well as instinctive powers, we may now as well do so. I mean the diversity in the operations of the latter, and the perfect sameness of the former — a sameness in all the operations of any given in- dividual animal, and likewise of each of the species. B. This is well worthy of consideration. When trying to explain instinctive operations upon the hypothesis of an intelligent principle acting under the impulse of sensations, I found in this perfect sameness and regularity of its operation a consi- derable difficult}^, though not perhaps an insuper- able one, not certainly so great a difficulty as those we have considered. A. How did you endeavour to explain, on that hy- pothesis, the regularity of Reason or Intelligence ? B. The absolute sameness of moral and intellec- tual character, and the limited sphere of ideas and events, will account for much. We see far less diversity of action and speech among peasants of a very confined knowledge and very limited range of h2 160 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. pursuits, than among persons of a higher degree of education and superior station in life. But still there is a great diversity. Taking, however, two men of most perfect resemblance in all their facul- ties, and all their feelings, similarly constituted in both body and mind, they would probably act nearly if not entirely alike. Whatever made one do a thing would make the other, and we must suppose them to be placed in perfectly similar cir- cumstances, so that the same things would happen to both. Chance is here to be put out of view ; because it only means ignorance of motives and circumstances, and assumes a diversity in these un- known to us, which by the supposition is here ex- cluded. Suppose these two individuals thus placed in like circumstances as to food and building ma- terials, why should they eat differently, or make different habitations ? What is there to make the one choose a plant which the other does not choose ? or form a hut in any particular different from the other ? If one kind of food was nearer the one, and another nearer the other individual, they might choose differently ; but this assumes that both kinds are agreeable to the constitution of their palates. A. As long as providing for merely physical wants was their whole occupation, it is probable that both would act alike, except that, if any diffi- culty occurred to be vanquished, I am not at all sure of their adopting the very same means to overcome it. One might break a nut with his teeth, another with a stone, or by bruising two nuts to- gether. But there is the same diversity in the con- duct of animals where they act by intelligent prin-. ciples. The general resemblance of their proceed- ings is explained by the consideration you are THEORY. 161 stating in the case you put of the boys. Their in- stinctive operations .would never vary in the least particular. When they came to reason, or specu- late, or converse, the sameness would probably cease. It seems inconsistent with imagination and with free will ; yet of this I speak doubtingly, con- sidering the hypothesis you have made of faculties and feelings perfectly alike in all respects. B. Certainly, you ought to speak doubtingly, when such is the hypothesis that is now binding us. I do not see how, even in reasoning, anything should ever come into the mind of the one that did not suggest itself to the other. But our hypothesis is not easy to remain under. Suppose, to make the case like instinct, two untaught children in differ- ent parts of the country, viz., one in China and the other here, to be placed in a situation where the same kinds of food and building materials were placed, and a variety of each, we may assume that similar tastes and constitution of mind and body would make them eat the same things, perhaps choose to shelter themselves by building rather than by going into caves, possibly to build with the same materials selected out of a number ; but it is much to say that they would exactly preserve the same figure and size and proportions in the huts they made. Each would certainly make blun- ders, and work inartificially ; and it is difficult to fancy them exactly making the same blunders, de- viating from the straight line or the circle by the same quantity of aberration, and from the perpen- dicular by the same angle : yet the bee in China and in England makes the same angles, and forms cells with the same proportions, and raises the grub the same height from the liquor provided for its 162 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. nutriment, so as to let it have access to the liquor without incommoding or drowning it. A. When instinct is interfered with by obstacles interposed, the animal's intelligent powers are brought into action, and then the uniformity and perfect regularity ceases. This seems to present under this head, as well as the other head of know- ledge and design or intention, a sufficiently marked distinction. JB. Certainly : and it is to be observed that the more sagacious any animal is, the greater variety is perceived in his actions and habits. Thus the elephant and the dog present general resemblances throughout each species ; but the instances of sagacity or reason which the different individuals exhibit are sufficiently various : whereas there is no more diversity in the ordinary working of the bee, than in the operations of crystallization, or the secretion of the sanguiferous or the lacteal system. In truth, we may compare the two cases together. Instinct seems to hold the same place in the mental which secretion and absorption do in the physical system. Intelligence or reason will some- times interfere with Instinct, as our voluntary actions will interfere with the involuntary operations of secretion. But the instinctive operation proceeds whether the animal wills or no — proceeds without his knowledge, and beyond his design — as secretion goes on in our sleep without our knowledge anil without any intention on our part. So as secretion goes on without any help from us, or any direct co-operation, Instinct works without any aid from Intelligence. But there is this difference in the con- nexion of will or Intelligence with Instinct, and the connexion of voluntary action with secretion — that THEORY. 163 the Instinct seems subservient to the intelligent will far more than the secreting power is to the volun- tary action. The bee, when obstructed, applies his Instinct, as it were, to overcome the obstacle, where- as we cannot alter at will the course of secretion ; we have some direct power over it, but very little. A. One thing seems quite clear, that upon any view of this great question, whatever theory we adopt, all leaves the inference of design untouched ; nay, the more we inquire, the more we perceive that all investigation only places in a stronger light the conclusion from the facts to a superintending Intel- ligence. B. Beyond all doubt it is so. The whole question is one of relations and connexions. Adaptation — adjustment — mutual dependence of parts — confor- mity of arrangement — balance — and compensation — everywhere appear pervading the whole system, and conspicuous in all its parts. It signifies not in this view whether we regard Instinct as the result of the animal's faculties actuated by the impressions of his senses — or as the faint glimmerings of Intelli- gence working by the same rules which guide the operations of more developed reason — or as a pecu- liar faculty differing in kind from those with which man is endowed — or as the immediate and direct operation of the Great Mind which created and which upholds die universe. If the last be indeed the true theory, then we have additional reason for devoutly admiring the spectacle which this depart- ment of the creation hourly offers to the contem- plative mind. But the same conclusion of a present and pervading Intelligence flows from all the other doctrines, and equally flows from them all. If the Senses so move the animal's mind as to produce the 164 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. perfect result which we witness, those senses have been framed and that mind has been constituted, in strict harmony with each other, and their com- bined and mutual action has been adjusted to the regular performance of the work spread out before our eyes, the subject of just wonder. If it is Reason like our own which moves the animal mechanism, its modification to suit that physical structure and to work those effects which we are unable to accom- plish, commands again our humble admiration, while the excellence of the workmanship performed by so mean an agent impresses us with ideas yet more awful of the Being who formed and who taught it. If to the bodily structure of these creatures there has been given a Mind wholly dif- ferent from our own, yet it has been most nicely adapted to its material abode, and to the corporeal tools wherewith it works; so that while a new variety strikes us in the infinite resources of creative skill, our admiration is still raised as before by the manifestation of contrivance and of expertness which everywhere speaks of the governing power, the directing skill, the plastic hand. Nor is there upon any of these hypotheses room for doubting the identity of the Great Artificer of nature. The same peculiarity everywhere is seen to mark the whole workmanship. All comes from a Supreme Intelligence ; that intelligence, though variously diversified, preserves its characteristic features, and ever shines another and the same. ( 165 ) NOTE TO THE DIALOGUES. Ik Dialogue I. the Instinct of the duckling hatched under the hen and of the chicken in the oven is men- tioned. The two following facts have occurred since that discussion was ended. When a sow farrows, the pigs are expelled with some force, and to a little distance, by the action of the uterus and abdominal muscles. Each pig instantly runs up to one of the teats, which he ever after regards as his own peculiar property ; afid when more pigs than teats are pro- duced, the latter ones run to the tail of some of the others, and suck till they die of inanition. Mr. Davy in his account of Ceylon mentions a remark- able Instinct of the alligator. He saw an egg in the sand just ready to crack, and broke it with his stick. The animal came out, and made at once for the river. He held his stick before it, and immediately the reptile put itself in a posture of defence, as an adult alligator would have done in like circumstances. In Dialogue III. there is some doubt expressed as to the water-moth loading its case, if too light in the water, with a kind of ballast. The larvse of the Phryganea are stated by Mr. Lyell to do this habitually, and to use fresh-water shells for their ballast. This gives rise to many masses of calcareous matter in the tertiary forma- tions. As many as 100 small shells are found surrounding one tube. (Principles of Geology, vol. ii. p. 232.) In Dialogue IV. some remarks are made upon Here- ditary Instincts. Mr. Roullin has related a similar in- stance of such Instinct in the hunting dogs of Mexico. Were they to attack the deer in front, whose weight ex- h3 166 ON THE GLOW-WORM. ceeds their own sixfold, they would be destroyed and have their backs broken, as happens to other dogs igno- rant of the manoeuvre, which consists in attacking from behind or laterally, and seizing the very moment when the deer, in running, rests upon two legs. The dog then takes hold of him by the belly and throws him over. The dog of pure breed inherits this stratagem and never attacks otherwise. Should the deer come upon him un- awares (from not seeing him), he steps aside and makes his attack at the proper time in the animal's flank ; other dogs, ho w ever superior in sagacity and strength, make the attack in front, and have their necks broken by the deer. So too some of our English miners carried out greyhounds to hunt the hares in Mexico. The air on that elevated platform, 9000 feet above the level of the sea, is so rare that the mercury stands at 19 inches gene- rally, and the dogs were soon exhausted with running in such an atmosphere ; but their whe^s are not at all in- commoded by it, and hunt as easily as the dogs of the country. Respecting the elephant, extraordinary accounts are told by military men who were in the Burmese war. They relate that when any extra task is to be performed by them, some favourite dainty is held up beforehand, and the sagacious animal, comprehending the promise of reward thus implied, exerts himself to earn it. This comes to the principle of barter as near as may be. ON THE GLOW-WORM. The facts relating to the light of this and other similar insects are by no means accurately known ; and upon some material points able observer's differ widely. Thus it was deemed very natural to suspect that some inflam- mable matter in a state of slow combustion caused the lu- minous appearance, the rather as it bears a striking re- semblance to the light emitted by phosphorescent bodies. Accordingly the obvious course was pursued by different ON THE GLOW-WORM. 167 experimenters, of exposing the insects to heat and to oxygen gas, to see if the light was increased ; and ex- posing them to carbonic acid and hydrogen gases, to see if the light was then extinguished. Forster and Spal- lanzani affirm that they have tried this experiment, and found the result to accord with the theory ; they assert distinctly that in oxygen gas, and on the application also of heat, the light is more brilliant, and that none is given out in hydrogen and carbonic acid gases. But Sir H. Davy found that the light continued in the latter gases not sensibly diminished, and that oxygen did not increase its brightness;* Mr. Macartney observed the light in vacuo and under water,f while Dr. Hulme found that it was extinguished in hydrogen, carbonic acid, and nitrous gases, although he could not perceive that oxygen gas increased 4 There seems reason to suspect that these able men made their experiments on different species of the insect, and that the animal or vital powers which re- gulate the secretion, or the use of the luminous matter, were affected by the gases applied. For it is admitted on all hands that the living insect has a power of ex- tinguishing the light independent of any mechanical ope- ration by which it may cover over the shining part ; and although the fire-fly has that part usually covered with its' wings, and therefore only shines when flying, the glow-worm's light is constant, unless she restrains or ex- tinguishes it by a voluntary act. That some luminous matter is secreted by the insect there can be no doubt. The fact that boys in South America rub their faces with bruised fire-flies, to make them shine, is asserted by travellers ; and this seems to render it probable that the glow-worm likewise secretes such an oil. But the experiments of an able chemist, Mr. Murray, have set this question at rest. He exa- mined a box in which glow-worms had been kept, and found several luminous specks which they had left behind them. Some of these yielded a steady light for five or * Phil. Trans. 1810, p. 287. t Ib - 18 1°- X lb. 1801. 168 ON THE GLOW-WORM. six hours. Mr. Murray says that the luminous matter is inclosed in a capsule of a transparent substance, which, when ruptured, lets out the matter in a liquid form of the consistency of cream. A French naturalist, M. Macaire, made some experiments upon this matter, the result of which differed materially in one respect from that of either Spallanzani, Davy, or Hulme ; for he is said to have found that the presence of oxygen in the air prevents it from shining-, a position not reconcileable with the worm shin- ing in the atmosphere. But some of this author's experi- ments seem to furnish a solution of many difficulties ; for their results refer the appearance to the animal func- tions. He found that the luminous matter is chiefly com- posed of albumen, and that any body which coagulates albumen destroys the shining quality; which it probably does by altering the albuminous state of the fluid. He also observed, that though a certain degree of tempera- ture is necessary for it, a higher degree destroys it alto- gether ; and also that common electricity has no effect in exciting it, but that voltaic electricity or galvanism does excite it. These observations, if accurate, are the most important that have been made upon this subject. They seem to indicate an immediate connection between the vital powers of the insect and its luminous quality ; and they account satisfactorily for the diversity in the results of former observers, who operated upon the animal appa- rently without taking its vital functions into the account. The glow-worm (Lampyris Noctiluca) is not the only luminous insect. There are several other kinds both winged and apterous. Of these the fire-fly, a species of the Elater and of the beetle tribe, has already been men- tioned. Indeed all the species of the Lampyris genus are supposed to be more or less luminous. Several other species of the Elater, as well as the fire-fly, are also lu- minous. Some species of the Fulgaro (an hemipterous insect), shine so bright that they are called lantern flies. Of these the Fulgora Candelaria is a native of China, and the F. Lanternaria, which is two or three inches long, is a native of South America. The shining matter in these, ON THE GLOW-WOKM. 169 and all others of the genus that shine at all, is confined in a transparent bulb projecting from the head.* Two species of centipes, the Geophilus Electricus and G. Phosphoreus, also shine; the former is a native of this country, the latter of Asia. Several theories have been formed to explain the use of this luminous quality. It is observable that some of the in- sects which have it are apterous in one sex while the other is winged — as the glow-worm, the male of which is a fly, the female being a caterpillar. In others, both male and female are winged. Again, some have the light always in front, and it seems not to vary in brightness, as the Fulgora. Naturalists have supposed that in these it is serviceable in discovering their prey. But it has also been suggested that defensive or protective purposes may be the final cause of the light. Insects which prey on caterpillars have been observed running round the Geophilus Electri- cus as if afraid to approach it.f But there is one peculi- arity in the glow-worm's light which seems to sanction the commonly received opinion of its use being chiefly, if not entirely, to attract and direct the approach of the male. Not only has the latter wings, and thus is by his habits little likely to be found near the unwinged female — there is also found to be much less light emitted by the male ; insomuch that at one time the female alone was believed to shine at all, until Ray corrected this error. It is also remarked that the light is the strongest when the two are together, and that in some, if not all the species, the luminous quality is confined to the time when they are destined to meet. Nor is De Geer's objection, founded on the observation that the chrysalis and larva of the species have somewhat of the same luminous quality, of much force. For as the very learned entomologists just cited, Messrs. Kirby and Spence, have well observed, this instance may easily be set down with the analogous case of males having a kind of lacteal system in some ani- mals, including our own species. It deserves further to be remarked, that in Brazil there is a glow-worm which is * Kirby and Spence, ii. 413. f lb. ii. 225. 170 ON THE GLOW-WORM. winged, both male and female, and the light given by this insect is not steady like that of our glow-worm, but sparkles or intermits. On the other hand, the fire-fly of Brazil is said to give a constant light.* But this may be owing to the greater luminousness of the tubercles in the thorax, which in the European fire-fly give so little light compared with the patches concealed by the cases (elytra) of the wings, that they seem only to shine when flying. * Kirby, Bridgewater Treatise, iL 366. ANALYTICAL VIEW RESEARCHES ON FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY, THEIR APPLICATION TO NATURAL THEOLOGY. ( 173 ) ANALYTICAL VIEW OF THE RESEARCHES ON FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY, AND THEIR APPLICATION TO NATURAL THEOLOGY. Fossil Osteology. The great work of Cuvier stands among those rare monuments of human genius and labour, of which each department of exertion can scarcely ever fur- nish more than one, eminent therefore above all the other efforts made in the same kind. In the stricter sciences the ' Principia' of Newton, and in later times its continuation and extension in La Place's ' Mecanique Celeste/ — in intellectual philosophy, Locke's celebrated work, — in oratory, Demosthenes, — in poetry, Homer, — * leave all competitors behind by the common consent of man- kind ; and Cuvier's Researches on Fossil Osteology will probably be reckoned to prefer an equal claim to distinction among the works on Comparative Anatomy. That this great performance deserves to be attentively studied there can be no doubt. * If English law were not a local learning merely, Fearne's work on Contingent Eemainders would perhaps deserve to be thus ranked. In the eloquence of the pulpit, Hall comes nearer Massillon than either Cicero does, or iEschines, to Demosthenes. 174 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. But as its bulk, in seven quarto volumes, may be apt to scare many readers, there may be some use in giving a general account of the progress of the author's inquiries, and of the principal results to which they led him, and more particularly in show- ing their application to Natural Theology. Long before his attention was called to the remains of animals found in various strata of the earth, in more superficial situations, in crevices of rocks, and in caves, he had, fortunately for science, been a skilful proficient in anatomy, both human and comparative. But the first steps of his in- quiries concerning those fossil remains showed him how much he had yet to do before he could im- plicitly trust the received accounts of the animal structures. As regards the human subject, for obvious reasons, the knowledge possessed, and which the ordinary works of anatomy contain, is accurate enough and sufficiently minute. But it is far otherwise with the structure of other animals, and especially as regards their Osteology. Of this Cuvier found so many instances, that he began his investigations with examining minutely and thoroughly the bones of all those species which, or the resemblance of which, are supposed to have furnished the materials of the great deposits of fossil bones so abundant in almost every part of our globe. This, then, was the course which he inva- riably pursued ; and he never attempted to draw any inferences respecting the fossil animal, until he had accurately ascertained the whole Osteology of the living species. There was obviously no other way of excluding mere fancy and gratuitous assumption from the inquiry, and making the science, of which he was really to lay the very CDVIEK. 175 foundation, one of pure reasoning from actual observation, in other words, one of strict induction. In the course of his work there are to be found striking examples of the mistakes into which for- mer inquirers had been led by neglecting this pre- caution. Partly by relying on incorrect, though generally received, descriptions, — partly by under- valuing the requisite comparisons of the fossil with the known bones, — partly, no doubt, by giving loose to fancy, observing the remains discovered with the bias of a preconceived opinion, and making the fact bend to a theory — authors had com- mitted the most grievous errors, hastened to con- clusions wholly unwarranted by the facts, and often drawn inferences which the facts themselves nega- tived instead of supporting. Thus M. Faujas cle St. Fond, a geologist of great learning and experi- ence, but who had upon a very scanty foundation erected a dogma, that all the fossil remains be- longed to animals still found alive in different parts of the earth, and set himself to deny the novelty of all the fossil species of unknown animals, con- ceived that he had at length himself found among those remains two animals which, if they still existed at all, could only be found in the interior and remote parts of India. Of these supposed dis- coveries he published the drawings, representing two fossil heads. But Cuvier, upon examination, found one of them to be exactly the auroch or bison, and the other the common ox.* A more skilful naturalist, Daiibenton, describes three sets of fossil teeth, in the King of France's cabinet, as belonging to the hippopotamus ; and upon examina- tion two of these sets are found to be teeth of two * Eecherches, vol. iv. p. 108. 176 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. new and unknown animals,* and the third alone those of the river horse ; and Camper, one of the greatest anatomists of his age, fell into a similar error. Upon the discovery of some fossil bones in the Duchy of Gotha, there was a general belief that they were some lusus naturce, and several medical men wrote tracts to prove it. But a nearer inspec- tion proved them to be elephant's bones, f The town of Lucern took in earlier times for the sup- porters to its arms a giant, from the opinion pro- nounced by a very celebrated physician (Felix Plata), that the bones discovered in that canton were human and gigantic, though Biumenbach afterwards examined them, and found they be- longed to the elephant. Finally, Scheutzer main- tained that there were remains in different places of men who had perished in the general deluge, and supported his opinion by several instances to which he referred. Upon examination these have proved to be none of them human bones ; but one set are those of a water salamander, while another belong to a newly discovered animal still less resembling our species, being something between a lizard and a fish 4 When professional anato- mists and professed naturalists could fall into such mistakes as these, there is little wonder that a statesman like Mr. Jefferson, however illustrious for higher qualities, should commit a similar blun- der. He drew from the fossil bones discovered by General Washington near his seat in Virginia, and to which his attention was directed by that great man, the conclusion that they belonged to an enormous carnivorous animal, which he named * Recherches, vol. i. p. 305. f lb. p.120. % lb., vol. v. pp. 433 and 451. cuvier. 177 the Megalonyx. Cuvier, from a more correct ex- amination, showed the creature to have been a sloth of large dimensions, and which fed wholly upon the roots of plants. If these examples, and they might be very greatly multiplied, evince the necessity of a cau- tious examination, and of a previous attention to the Osteology of animals with which we are fully acquainted, the success of Cuvier's inquiries also shows that, with due care and circumspection, the reward of the inquirer is sure. The connexion between the different parts of the animal frame is so fixed and certain, and the species run so little into one another, that it requires but a small por- tion of any animal' s remains to indicate its nature, and ascertain the class to which it belongs. Each small portion, so it be superficial, of bone — each little bony eminence — has its distinctive character in each species ; and from one of these, or some- times from a piece of horn, or of hoof, or a tooth, the whole animal may be determined. " If," says Cuvier, " you have but the extremity of a bone well preserved, you may by attention, consideration, and the aid of the resources which analogy fur- nishes to skill, determine all the rest quite as well as if you had the entire skeleton submitted to you."* Before placing entire reliance on such an induction, this great observer tried many experi- ments on fragments of the bones of known animals, and with a success so unvaried as gave him natu- rally implicit confidence in his method when he came to examine Fossil Remains. * Eecherches, vol. i. p. 52. We have used the expression skeleton ; the author says animal, but manifestly, from what follows, this is incorrect. 178 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. Among those he discovered a number of animals wholly unknown, and of which no individuals have existed since the period when the authentic history of our globe and its inhabitants has been recorded. Out of the 150 which he investigated about 90 were either of new orders, or of new genera, or new species of genera still living on the earth. Consider, in respect to genera, there were in the 49 unknown species, 27 which belonged to unknown genera, and these genera amounted to seven. Of the remaining 22, 16 belonged to known genera or sub-genera ; the total number of genera and sub-genera, to which he could reduce the whole of his fossil species, known or unknown, being 36. It must, however, be added, that it is very possible the remaining 60 also may be of new species ; for as he only had the bones to examine, it does by no means follow that the living animal did not differ as much from the ones which have the same Osteo- logy, as the mule, or the ass, or the zebra do from the horse, the jackall from the dog, or the wolf from the fox ; for the skeletons of a zebra, an ass, and a horse, present the same appearance to the osteologist ; so do those of the jackall, the dog, the fox, and the wolf; and yet the same bones clothed with muscle, cartilage, skin, and hair, are both to the common observer and to the naturalist animals of a different species or subdivision. This consi- deration is to be taken into the account as a deduc- tion or abatement from the certainty which attends these researches ; the certainty is only within cer- tain limits ; the fossil animals which now appear to resemble one another, because their Osteology is the same, may have differed widely when living ; those which appear to have been of the same class CUVIER. 179 with other animals that yet people the earth, may- yet have been extremely different ; and those which now seem to be in certain particulars different from any we or our predecessors have ever known, may differ from all that live or have lived on the earth we now inhabit, in many particulars far more striking than the varieties which their bony re- mains present to the osteologist's eye.* The situations in which those remains were found, and are still to be met with in greater or less abundance, are various ; but they may be re- duced to three classes in one respect and to four in another : to three, if we regard only the kind of place where the bones are collected and found, in other words their mineral matrix ; to four, if we regard the periods at which the earthy formations were effected, and the bones of animals living then, or immediately before, were deposited. In the former point of view, the remains are found either, first, imbedded in strata, at greater or less depth, and of various kinds, and at various inclinations ; — or, secondly, mixed together, and with earthy matter, in caves, and in rents or fissures or breaches formed in rocks; — or, thirdly, scattered more sparingly, and as it were solitarily in alluvial soil or superficial detritus, in portions of the earth, ap- parently while it wore its present form, and was peopled by all or most of its present inhabitants. In the latter, and the more important point of view ? those remains are either found, first, in the beds which were deposited by the waters of a world be- fore the existence of either human beings or the * Mr. C. once or twice adverts to this consideration ; but he certainly does not bring it so prominently forward as would have been desirable. 180 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. greater number of living genera of animals— as in the copper slate of Thuringia, the lias of England, the clay of Honfleur, and the chalk — in these strata the remains of reptiles are found with extinct spe- cies of marine shells, but no vertebrated animal higher than fishes ; or, secondly, in the strata de posited by the sea, after it had destroyed the first races, and covered the land they lived upon, — and in these beds, which at Paris lie on the chalk, are to be found only animals now extinct, and of which most of the genera and all the species differ from any we now see ; — or, thirdly, in the strata depo- sited by the sea, or in fresh-water lakes, — and in these later tertiary beds are to be found animals now unknown, but resembling the present races, being different species of the same genera, or ap- parently of families still living, but not now inha- biting the same countries, or living under the same olimates ; — or, fourthly, in places where rivers, lakes, morasses, turf-bogs, have buried the remains of existing species ; and as these changes of a limited extent have happened to the globe, con- stituted as it still is, those animals appear to have been for the most part identical with the animals which we still see alive in various parts of the world, at least as far as their skeletons can tell. Paris is the centre of a most extraordinary geo- logical district. It is a basin of twenty leagues, between fifty and sixty English miles, in diameter, extending in a very irregular form from the Oise near Compiegne on the north, to the Canal de Lory, beyond Fontainebleau on the south, and from Mantes on the Seine upon the west, to Montmirail on the east ; comprehending within its circuit the towns of ParisaVersailles, Fontainebleau, Estampes, CUVIER. 181 Meaux, Melun, Senlis, Nangis, and coming close to Soissons, Grisors, Beauvais, Montereau on the Yonne, Nogent on the Seine, and Conde ; but not being continuous within these limits, for it is fre- quently cut off in islands, and every where towards the outline deeply indented with bays. This vast ba- sin consists of six different formations, in part calca- reous, but in some of which gypsum is so plentiful, that the quarries dug in it go by the common name of the Plaster of Paris quarries, and indeed gypsum has derived it common name from these. The lowest bed upon the chalk is composed of plastic clay, and it has covered both the plains and the caves of the district. This bed is full of fossil remains, very many of them belonging to unknown animals, and it also contains fragments of rock, which have come from a great distance. Above this bed is a layer of gritty limestone and shelly grit, of salt-water formation. Then come in succession silicious limestone, fresh-water gypsum, and sand and grit without shells. The fourth formation is sandy, and of marine origin. The fifth has fresh-water remains and animals. The disposition of the land around and forming this basin wears in all respects the appearance of having been broken in upon and hollowed out by a prodigious irruption of water from, the south-east. Considerable corrections have since been made, especially as regards the second and third of these formations of Cuvier. It appears that the base or bottom of the Paris Basin must have been originally covered with the sea. Different parts of the ground were then covered with fresh-water lakes, from which gypsum and marl were deposited, filled with the bones of animals that lived on their banks or in their islands, i 182 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. and died in the course of nature. After this depo- sition, the sea again occupied the ground, and deposited sand mixed with shells ; and when it left the land dry for the last time, there were for a long while ponds and marshes over the greater part of the surface, which thus became covered with strata containing fresh-water shells, the base of those strata consisting of a peculiar stone found in fresh water, and occurring in many parts of France. The fossil remains in this great basin exhibit little va- riety of families ; and the vegetable remains show that the plants were confined to palms and a few others now unknown in Europe. As the great continents, which offer a free communication throughout, are inhabited by a great variety of animals, while New Holland and the other islands in the South Seas have only a very few, and these almost all of the same family, we may conclude that the land forming the Paris Basin was originally surrounded by the sea. The deposits in the rents or fissures of the strata may now be briefly mentioned, and they present a very singular subject of contemplation. They are found all around the Mediterranean, at Gibraltar, Cette, Antibes, Nice, Pisa ; in Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica ; at the extremity of the kingdom of Na- ples ; on the coast of Dalmatia ; and in the island of Cerigo. The body of the deposit is calcareous, and of the same kind in all these gaps or fissures. Thft same, or nearly the same, bones are everywhere found imbedded in it ; they are chiefly the bones of ruminating animals ; and beside those of oxen and deer, there are found those of rodents, a kind of tortoise, and two carnivorous animals. In these fissures there are many land but no sea shells ; and CUVIER. 183 the matter that fills them is unconnected with other strata. It follows from the first fact that they must have been consolidated before, and at the time when, the sea came over those countries and de- posited shell-fish in the other strata ; and from the second fact it follows that they must have been formed when the rocks, in the rents of which they are found, were already formed and dry. Hence these fissure deposits are modern compared to the strata which were formed at the bottom of the sea and of lakes. Nor does any operation now going on upon our globe bear the least resemblance, in Cuvier's judgment, to that by which those deposits must have been made. Upon this, however, great controversy has arisen among his successors. It was necessary that we should shortly advert to the places where, for the most part, these fossil remains are found ; in doing so we have anticipated a few of the conclusions deduced from the consi- deration of the whole subject. We are now to see what results were afforded by Cuvier's careful exa- mination of the remains, which he instituted after he had with equal care ascertained the exact Osteo- logy of the living animals in each case where the fossil remains appeared to offer a resemblance with existing tribes. The first part of Cuvier's researches is occupied with the pachydermatous* animals whose remains are found in alluvial deposits. The second part consists of two subdivisions — in one of which are given minutely the whole details of the Paris Basin — in the other subdivision the exa- mination of the animal remains, beginning with the pachydermatous, and then the others that accom * Animals with thick skins, as the elephant, horse, hog. i2 184 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. pany them, whether quadrupeds, reptiles, fishes, or birds. So that the Paris Basin is made the ground of this arrangement, and its Fossil Zoology is gone through without much regard to the general ar- rangement of the rest of the work. The third part is occupied with the ruminant animals, unless in so far as one of its subdivisions, treating of the gaps or fissures of the Mediterranean, also treats of the few other animals which are there found beside the rumiuant. The fourth part is occupied with carnivorous animals — the (fifth with rodents — the sixth with toothless or edentate animals — the seventh with maritie mammalia — the eighth and last, and per- haps the most interesting of the whole, with reptiles; including the anomalous species newly discovered ? which partake of the nature at once of the reptile and fish or of the reptile and bird. As no arrangement is yet made of these fossil animals under any of the heads which we have stated, we are at liberty to adopt any order that may appear most convenient ; and we shall accordingly begin with those which at first appeared to resem- ble the known species of the rhinoceros, the hip- popotamus, and the elephant, and which a careless observer would unquestionably have confounded with these animals ; but they were soon ascertained to be different. I. Of the fossil rhinoceros four distinct species have been found ;* and they are all distinguishable from the four known kinds of rhinoceros — those of India, Java, Sumatra, and the Cape. The fossil animal had a head both larger and narrower than * Of these there are now nine species, five having been discovered since Cuvier's work. CUVIEK. 185 the living kinds, and much larger in proportion to his body. He was also much lower, and a more creeping animal. He, for the most part, had either no incisive teeth or very small ones, but one species had these of a good size. One of the fossil species is distinguished from all the four known ones and from the other three fossil ones, by a still more marked peculiarity ; his nostrils are divided from each other not by a gristly or cartilaginous, but by a bony partition, whence the name of' Tichorhinus* has been given to him, the three others being termed Leptorhi?ius,\ Incisivus, and Minutus. The grinding teeth of the Tichorhinus are also found to have a peculiarity which no other teeth either of any living or any fossil animal have. They are indented at the base in one of the ridges, after being worn down by use. This, as well as the bony partition, affords, therefore, the means of discovering the species. The use of the partition apparently was to support the weight of two large and heavy horns on the nose. The history of the first of these species, the Tichorhinus, furnishes a remarkable example of the errors into which even able and expert observers may fall when they make more haste than good speed to reach a conclusion. A missionary named Campbell having sent home the head of a rhino- ceros, being one of several killed close by his resi- dence, and well known to have been so, Sir Everard Home compared it with a fossil head from Siberia, sent by the Emperor of Russia to Sir Joseph Bankes ; and finding, as he thought, that it was of the same species, he very rashly inferred that the position which affirms the existence of unknown * From Teixos, a wall. f From Astttos, slender. 186 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. animals among the fossil remains was much weak- ened by this supposed discovery. Cuvier made a more accurate comparison, and found that the Cape skull was materially different from the fossil one, but resembled the head of the existing species, which Sir Everard Home had also denied. The most remarkable omission, however, of the latter was his never looking to see if there existed a bony partition between the nostrils. This Cuvier did, and found it cartilaginous and not bony. So that the most singular of the new and unknown fossil animals belonging to this class remained still a novelty, even if Sir Everard Home had been correct in all the comparative examinations which he ever did make ; and his conclusion of fact from that comparison, even if admitted to be well founded, had no bearing whatever upon the general position against which he had pointed it. The extraordinary fact of a portion of one of these ancient and lost animals' muscular substance and skin having been found, is further to be men- tioned. In a block of ice on the banks of the "Wilujii, a river of Siberia, there was discovered this huge mass of flesh, about the year 1770. It was found to have longish hair upon parts on which the existing rhinoceros has only leather ; consequently it must have lived in a colder climate than the pre- sent animal inhabits. But it appears to have been killed by some sudden catastrophe, and then to have been immediately frozen, else it would have undergone decomposition like the other remains of which the bones alone are left. There are two species of living elephants, the African and the Asiatic ; the former distinguished from the latter chiefly by the length of his tusks, CUVIER. 187 by a peculiar disposition of the enamel in the jaw teeth, and by never having been tamed, at least in modern times. The fossil elephant resembles the Asiatic species most, but differs in some material particulars. It has long- tusks, sometimes exceeding nine feet in length ; the jaw teeth are differently set ; the under jaw of a different shape, as well as other bones ; and from the length of the socket bones of the tusks the trunk must have been also very dif- ferent. These remains* are found in great abun- dance both in Europe and in America, in neither of which parts of the globe are there now any living elephants of any species produced. In the same strata and caves other animals are also found both of the known and extinct classes ; and occasionally shells also. The elephants' bones are chiefly dis- covered on plains of no considerable elevation and near the banks of rivers. They never could have been transported by the sea over the mountains of Tartary, upwards of 20,000 feet in height, which separate Siberia from the parts of Asia where the elephant now flourishes. It must be added, that, beside those bones, a still more perfect specimen of the softer parts has been preserved by the action of cold than we have of the rhinoceros. In the same country, near the mouth of the river Lena, a mass of ice was found in 1799 by a fisherman, which he could not break or move ; but in the course of the next summer it partially melted, when it was found to contain an entire elephant frozen. The neigh- bouring Tartars with their dogs, and afterwards the bears, destroyed the greater part of the flesh, but the skin and bones were saved. It was found to * There are now known eight species of this fossil elephant 188 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. have hair, and even woolly hair or fur, upon different parts of the body. It must then have been calcu- lated, like the animal of the Wilujii, for living in a climate much colder than that of India or Africa, and, like that rhinoceros, it must have been frozen immediately after its death. Its tusks were circular, and nine feet (near ten English) long. Of the hippopotamus, two species* have been found among the fossil bones, both so different from all living animals, that every one bone of each differs from any other known bone ; so that even if an error should have been committed in connecting the different bones together, there must be not only two, but more than two, new species thus discovered. These animals abound in the great deposit of fossil bones in Tuscany, in the valley of the Arno, and at Brentford in Middlesex. There are two other fossil species, of which, however, less is known ; one of these is very small, not larger than a common hog. Three pieces of a jaw-bone, with some fragments of teeth, have been found in Siberia ; which upon examination prove to have belonged to a singular species, resembling both the rhinoceros and the horse, and forming probably the link between these two animals. The size is larger than the largest fossil rhinoceros. The discoverer, Mr. Fischer, has named it the Elasmotherium,^ from the thin enamel plate which winds through the body of the tooth in a peculiar manner. But much more is known of a lost species which approaches the elephant, although differing in some important respects both from the living and the * Two more species have since been found. f EAaoytos, thin plate. CUVIER. 189 fossil elephant. The most remarkable difference in the Osteology is presented by the jaw teeth, which have the upper surface mamellated or studded with nipples ; from whence Cuvier named it the Masto- don.* When these tubercles are worn clown by use, the surface of the tooth has a uniformly plane or uniformly concave surface. The structure of the vertebra? shows it to have been a weaker animal than the elephant ; and the belly was considerably smaller. The lower part of the fore-leg was longer, and the upper joint shorter ; the shoulder one-ninth shorter too. The pelvis was more depressed ; the tibia and thigh bones, materially thicker ; and the body a good deal longer in proportion to the height. As it fed upon vegetables, and had a short neck and feet unfit for living in the water, it must have had a trunk ; and it also had tusks. It seems to have fed upon the softer parts of vegetables, and to have inhabited marshy ground. Six speciesf have been discovered of this animal, chiefly differing from each other in the teeth ; and of these six, two only are well known. The mastodon was long supposed to be peculiar to America, and was some- times called the Ohio animal ; but there have since been found teeth in different parts of Europe, evi- dently belonging to the two better known species ; and the other four kinds are, to all appearance, European. In the same strata with the remains of elephants, rhinoceroses, and other animals both of extinct ge- nera and species, are almost everywhere found the bones and teeth of horses, very nearly resembling * Or Mastodonte, -which is sometimes, but unnecessarily, rendered by Mastodonton : fxaa-ros, mamilla. f Five more species have since been discovered. i 3 190 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. those of the animal now so well and universally known. It yet happens that for want of due atten- tion to a branch of anatomy more familiar to us than any except the human, naturalists have con- stantly fallen into error in examining fossil bones. Thus Lang, in his history of the figured stones of Switzerland, took a horse's tooth for a hippopota- mus's ; and Aldrovandinus in one work describes teeth of that class as giants', and in another as horses' ; while several authors have confessed that they could not tell to what tribe such remains had belonged. Cuvier did not, therefore, -deem himself released from the duty of fully examining the com- mon horse's osteology, merely because of the fre- quent and minute descriptions which had previously been given of it ; and his intimate acquaintance thereby obtained with the nature of every bone and tooth, has enabled him to pronounce with confi- dence upon the existence of horses like our own among the unknown animals which inhabited the earth before the vast revolutions that changed both its surface and its inhabitants. He has, however, justly noted the fact that there is no distinguishing the bones of the horse, the ass, the mule, and the quagga ; so that very possibly these remains may have belonged to any of those animals ; and very possibly also to none of them, but to some fifth species, now, with the mastodon and other contem- porary animals, extinct. The same remark is of course applicable to the bones of the hog and the wild boar, found occasionally among other fossil remains. The tapir family in many important particulars resembles the rhinoceros ; and those are often found in the same tertiary strata with the rhinoceros, CUVIER. 191 elephant, and mastodon^ several species now wholly extinct, but allied to the tapir. Two of these must have been of prodigious size, the largest 18 feet (19^ English) long and 11 (nearly 12 English) high.* But there are other species, to the number of twelve at least, whose size differs little from that of the tapir ; the bones are somewhat different, however, and particularly the teeth, which, from the eminences or ridges upon them, Cuvier made the ground of the genus, to which he gave the name of Lophiodon.\ It is in different parts of France that all these species were first found : the smaller ones always in strata of fresh-water shells, and in company with remains of either unknown land animals, or crocodiles and other river animals now found in hot climates ; and in several places the strata in which they occur, have been covered over, after they had been deposited and their bed consolidated, with strata of an origin unquestion- ably marine. By far the greater part of fossil remains, both those which have been already de- scribed, and those which we are afterwards to con- sider, having been found in sandy, or calcareous, or other earthy strata. But some few are also found in imperfect coal or lignite. In the part of the Appenines where that range meets the Alps there is a tertiary coal stratum, and in it have been found two new genera of pachydermatous animals, and a third in the fresh-water deposit near Agen. Cuvier calls these Anihracotheria.\ The general conclusion which is to be derived from the important branch of the inquiry of which * This is now better known, and is called the Dinotherium. f Ao(piov, a small hill, eminence, or ridge % Av9pa£, coal. Of these seven species are now known. 192 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. we have been analyzing the resulting propositions, is partly zoological and partly appertains to geology. The former portion of it is, that more than thirty kinds of land animals have left their fossil remains in the strata now forming dry land, but deposited under water ; that of these, seventeen or eighteen* are now extinct, and have been wholly unknown since the earth was peopled with its present inha- bitants, six or seven being of a genus now unknown, the others being new species of known genera ; that twelve or thirteen kinds have, as far as their bones are concerned, the appearance of having belonged to the species which still inhabit the globe, although their identity is far from certain, depend- ing only upon the similarity of their skeletons ; and that animals of genera now almost confined to the: torrid zone used formerly to inhabit high and mid- dling latitudes. The geological portion of the conclusion is that some of these fossil remains have been buried by the last or one of the last revolutions to which our planet has been subjected, as they are in loose and superficial strata, whilst other remains in the tertiary strata appear generally to have come from deaths in the course of nature, though some of these too must have perished by a sudden revolution. II. The Paris Basin presents, in great abundance, the remains of herbivorous pachydermatous animals of two distinct genera, each comprehending several- species, and all alike unknown in the living world. The animals to which some of them approach the nearest are the tapirs ; but they differ even gene- rically from these, and from every other known tribe. The inquiry into which Cuvier entered for ' * According as the Elasmotherium is allowed to be suffi- ciently distinguished or not. CUVIER. 193 the purpose of ascertaining to which set of bones each particular piece belonged, so that he might be able to restore the entire skeletons by putting together all the parts of each, was long, painful, and difficult in the highest degree. He had first to connect the two bones of the hinder feet together, in each instance, by .minutely examining the relation of the pieces to one another ; and this process could only be conducted by deriving light from the analo- gies of other and known animals. He then had the different bones of the fore feet in like manner to put together, in order to restore those fore feet. Next the hinder and fore feet of each animal were to be connected together. Afterwards he had to mount upwards and connect the bones of the body with the several feet. The teeth and head must next be referred to the limbs. Then the vertebrae and then the trunks were to be restored; and then other bones, not yet accounted for, were to have their places found. The result of this most elaborate and perplexing investigation, the details of which occupy the fifth part of a large quarto volume, and are illustrated by between sixty and seventy admi- rable plates, containing between six hundred and seven hundred figures of bones, fragments of bones, and congeries of bones, may be stated shortly thus : — There are of the first genus, which he de- nominates Palceotherium* six, or perhaps seven, species - ) - principally distinguished by the teeth and the size, as far as the bones are concerned, but which, probably, were much more widely different when alive. One of these resembled a tapir, but was only a foot and a half in length, being about * TlaXcuos, ancient ; 6r)pioi/, wild beast, f Eleven species are now known. 194 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. the size of a roebuck. Another was nearly three feet high, and the size of a hog. A third was be- tween four and five feet in height, and about the size of the horse or the Java rhinoceros. It had feet thicker than a horse's, and a larger head ; its eyes were very small, its head long, and it had a snout protruding much over its under jaw and lip. In a specimen of one of these species, the first now mentioned, there were actually found some of the animal's softer parts, certain flexible filaments, which, upon being burnt, gave an animal smell, and were manifestly portions of the nerves or blood-vessels. Besides these three species, three, and possibly four others, were distinguished, one the size of a hare. The other genus was termed by Cuvier Anoplo- therium,* and of these, two species, at least, are distinguishable.! The first, or common anoplothe- rium, is about the size of an ass, being four or five feet high, and its body four feet long, but with a tail of three feet long ; it was probably an animal that lived partly in the water, as it appears made for swimming like an otter. But it has a peculiarity of structure which is to be found in no other animal whatever ; its feet are cloven, but have two sepa- rate and distinct metacarpal and metatarsal bones, which are soldered together in other animals ; it has also its teeth contiguous, while all other ani- mals except man have them apart. The other species, or secondary anoplotherium, resembles the former, but is only the size of a common hog. But beside these anoplotheria properly so called, four other cognate species are found, one of the size and *Avoir\os, unarmed, without tusks, f Six species are now ascertained. cuvier. 195 appearance of a gazelle, one the size of a hare, and two of the size of a guinea pig. A curious speci- men gives the very form of the anoplotherium's brain, a cast of it remaining in the earthy mass. Its size is extremely small, and Cuvier infers from this that the animal was exceedingly stupid. All these animals are found in the Paris Basin ; but bones of the palaeotherium have been discovered elsewhere, namely, at Orleans, Aix in Provence, Montpelier, and Isell. As the specimens from those other places were extremely rare in Cuvier's time, he could not have the same certainty respecting them as from the more copious collections obtained in the Paris district. But he could distinguish at least three different species. Beside these two new genera, the palaaotherium and anoplotherium, the Paris Basin affords two other new genera of pachydermata, the one, called Clueropotamas* resembling animals of the hog kind — the other, adapis, very small, being about a third larger than the hedgehog, which it also re- sembled in structure. There are found, too, the remains of five or six kinds of carnivorous animals, one of them being of enormous size, and resem- bling a tiger. Another has projecting bones to support a bag or purse as in the kangaroo kind ; but it is of a genus of marsupial animals now found only in America, being a sort of opossum. The Basin, besides, affords a considerable number of tortoise remains, some fish bones, and even per- fectly complete skeletons of fish, and ten species, at least, of birds, all now unknown, but one of which resembles the Egyptian ibis. It is very re- markable that in one specimen, brought to Cuvier * There are now three species known. 196 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. while his work was printing, the windpipe was pre- served, and the mark or mould of the brain ap- peared upon the surface of the gypsum. III. Of ruminating animals the fossil deposits present many remains. There are of the deer, be- side divers that closely resemble known species, no less than twelve* species wholly unknown among the existing inhabitants of our earth. One has enormous horns, six feet from tip to tip, and of this animal we know nothing among existing spe- cies, though it comes nearest the elk. Two kinds are somewhat like roebucks, and of that size. The ■.fissures of the Mediterranean give six new species,")" of which that found at Nice is like an antelope or sheep .J None of our common oxen are found in a fossil state, unless „in morasses or peat bogs, where they have certainly been buried while the globe's sur- face was in its present condition, and peopled as we now find it. But animals of the same genus cer- tainly existed in the age of the elephant and rhino- ceros, and of the extinct species.§ There prevails no small uncertainty as to the identity of the * No less than twenty-eight species are now known. f In the Kesume to Parts III. and IV., Cuvier says, " Of the six deer found in alluvial deposits, one with large horns is entirely unknown ; of the four in fissures, three are un- known, at least in any but most distant countries. Another, that of Orleans, is quite unknown, as are the two species of lagomys found in the fissures." J A thirteenth new species was at one time supposed to have been found in the Swedish province of Scania; but Cuvier, before the last volume of his work was printed, had reason to believe that this animal belonged to one of the tribes formerly known, and still living in the north of Europe. § Of these there are now seven ascertained. CUVIER. 197 fossil bison and musk buffalo with the living species of the former in Europe and of the latter in America ; but the remains which have been found of a kind of ox, appear different from any known species, and it appears that no buffalo resembling either that of the East Indies or that of the Cape has been found in anyplace. The conclusions, both zoological and geological, from this part of the investigation and from the examination of the remains found in the Paris Basin, in every respect tally with those to which we were led by a consideration of the pachydermatous remains under the first head of the inquiry. IV. There are found in caverns both in France, Germany, Yorkshire, and Devonshire, and in the fresh-water formation of Val d'Arno, in Tuscany, the remains of many animals, some extinct and others no longer inhabitants of the same temperate latitudes, but confined to the frozen and the torrid zones. By far the greater part of these animals belong to the carnivorous class, except in the York- shire caves, where many of the herbivorous kind are also to be found. In the foreign caves the bear is the most numerous, and presents extinct species. In the Yorkshire caves (at Kirkdale) the hyaena predominates. In the German caves hyaenas are comparatively few, and in Val d'Arno not more numerous. In Kirkdale there are very few bears. The race of lions and tigers is much more rare than any of the others. Not above fifteen have been found in Germany, while there have been found hundreds of bears ; and in Yorkshire, where hyaenas abound, very few lions and tigers are traceable. Of the wolf and fox, some are found, but not so many in Yorkshire. There is also a very large kind of 198 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. dog traced, which must have been five feet in height and eight in length from the mouth to the tail. Of bears it appear, after a very close examina- tion, that there are found, at least two species* larger than those now known, and a third which, both in size and other particulars, so nearly ap- proaches the common bear, that Cuvier does not regard it as a new species. But it seems as if the one found in Tuscany formed a third kind of ani- mal now extinct. The hysena j is found not only in the caverns and other quarries where the bear abounds, but also in the alluvial strata with the elephants and rhino- ceroses. In Kirkdale cave his dung has been dis- tinctly recognised by a comparison with that of living hyaenas ; and the particular crack which he makes in the bones of the beasts devoured by him to get at the marrow, has, in like manner, been iden- tified by actual comparison. Nevertheless the fossil animal differs from the living one in some material respects, particularly in size, and in hav- ing his extremities both thicker and shorter. The caverns contain two speciesj of a huge animal of the felis (or cat) kind, considerably larger than the lion or the tiger, beside some few resembling living species in size. One is between one-eighth and one-ninth larger than the lion, and has its trunk more convex in the lower outline. A new, but smaller, species of the felis kind is also found in the Mediterranean fissures. In the dog tribe there has been found a wolf or dog,§ but more probably the former, which differs, * Seven more have since been added. f Now eight species. % Now fifteen. § Ten species are now known. cuvier. 199 though slightly, from any known species, in having the muzzle shorter in proportion to the skull ; and also a species has been observed clearly new of the same genus. We as yet only know of it by two of his jaw teeth, found at Avaray, near Beaugency. He must have been eight feet long and five high. The Paris Basin affords, likewise, another new species of the dog kind, but not materially varying in point of stature. The common fox, however, is found, and also the dog and wolf, in the caves. The caves afford a considerable number of bones of the weasel and glutton,* closely resembling the existing species. The latter animal is only known now in the higher latitudes ; but in the caves we find his remains mixed with those of animals belonging to the temperate and the torrid zones. It is thus shown by the inquiries which comprise the third and fourth part of this great work, that the former inhabitants of these regions were wholly different from the present population. Even the animals of hot climates here found, and referable to existing genera, must have differed entirely from those species which survive in the torrid zone, be- cause they could exist in a temperature now wholly foreign to their nature. The rein-deer and the lion, the sloth and the elephant, all found in the game places, show that the climate of those lati- tudes remains nearly the same, but that their in- habitants have been changed. In all these researches one blank is immediately perceptible. There are not only no human remains whatever, but there are none of apes or of any of the genus of quadrumanes. Animals far less in size, and whose bones would much more easily have * Of the fossil gulo two species are now ascertained. 200 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. perished, as rats and mice, have left their skeletons with those of the largest beasts ; but of the monkey tribe no vestige whatever is to be discovered ; and the conclusion is inevitable, that the strata were de- posited, the fissures filled, the caverns strewed with bones> at an age anterior to the existence of that tribe, as well as to the creation of our own species, Thus it was when Cuvier wrote.* V. Beside the animals of the Rodent description, found in the Paris Basin and the Mediterranean fissures, rabbits, lagomys, field mice, there are several others in the alluvial strata and caverns, — some apparently of known, and others, certainly, of unknown kinds. The hare has been traced at Kirkdale; the beaver near the Rhine; two new speciesf of the beaver near RostofT, in the south of Russia ; another species, also unknown, at CEningen. VI. The toothless or Edentate animals afford some varieties still greater than those to which our attention has as yet been directed. None of the known species of this tribe are to be found in any of the strata, fissures, or caves in Europe. But three genera entirely new, with two of which at least there are ample materials for becoming acquainted, have been found in America, and these are de- serving of our best attention. The first is the animal named by Jefferson, from the size of his feet, or rather what he supposed claws, the Megalonyx,% and respecting which he. * This refers of course to the state of discovery in Cuvier s time. There are remains of the monkey said to have been lately discovered in the South of France and in the Hima- laya Mountains ; it is said also at Calcutta. But the proofs are not clear. t Now four are known, and three of lagomys. J Two species are now known. CUVIER. 20] fell into an error as we formerly stated. Cuvier preceded his examination of this as of all other animal remains by a thorough investigation of the osteology of living animals of this family ; and it is the result of his careful enquiry that the bones found in America and described by Jefferson, and of which both casts and drawings were sent over, as well as a tooth, belonged to an animal of the sloth tribe, but wholly new, and now quite extinct. The tooth was cylindrical, and worn down on the top, but cased round with enamel like a sloth's, and not at all like a cat's. In the paw, the second phalangal bone was symmetrical. This bone is curved and not symmetrical in animals that raise up and draw back the claw, as all the cat kind do. The first phalangal bone, too, was the shortest ; whereas the lion and others of the cat kind have that bone the longest. But from the known species of sloth it differs most strikingly in its stature, winch was equal to that of the largest oxen, those of Hungary and Switzerland, and a sixth larger than the common kind. The second of these new animals has been termed Megatherium, from his great size, and the remains are found in South America. From his teeth it appears that he lived on vegetables, but the struc- ture of his very long fore paws and nails shows that it was chiefly on the roots. He possessed also good means of defence, and so was not swift of foot. His covering seems to have been a thick and bony coat of mail like the armadillo's. His length was twelve feet and a half (near thirteen feet and a half Eng- lish), and his height seven feet (about seven feet and a half ). From the sloth he differs not only in size but in other particulars ; for example, his 202 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. fore kegs are much nearer the length of his hinder legs than in the sloth, which has the former double the latter. But, on the other hand, the thicknesa of the thigh bone in the megatherium is much greater than in any of the known sloth tribe, or indeed any other animal either known or extinct ; for the thigh bone is about half as thick as it is long. The third of these new animals was known to Cuvier only by one fragment which he examined. It was a toe ; and from a careful discussion of its form and size he inferred that the animal belonged to the edentate tribe of Pangolins, and that, if so ? . its length must have been twenty-four feet (twenty- six English), and its height in the same enormous proportion. The bones were found in the Palatin- ate near Eppelsheim.* VII. The course of our analysis has now brought us to the family of the Sea Mammalia, and these supply new food for wonder. So different from the bones of any living animals are those remains which have been examined, that a new genus is. formed consisting of several species, and bearing the same relation to the cetacea, or animals of the whale tribe, that the mastodon, paleeotherium, and anoplotherium do to the pachydermata, or that the megalonyx and megatherium do to the edentata. He terms the genus Ziphius, from its having a sword-like head. One of these was found near the mouths of the Rhone. The dimensions are not given by Cuvier, but from the drawing the head appears to have been about three feet in length. The remains of a second species of ziphius were found thirty feet under * Subsequent discoveries hare made it probable that this toe belonged to the Dinotherium. CUVIEK. 203 ground at Antwerp, and between nine and ten under the level of the sea at low water. The head is considerably larger than that of the first men- tioned species. The head of a third species is found in the museum at Paris, but with no account of its history. Besides this new genus, there are other cetacea of new species discovered among the fossil bones. At Angers a Lamantin of an extinct species has- been traced. The remains of a dolphin, which must have been twelve or thirteen feet long, and different from all the known species, have been found in Lombardy. In the Landes another dol- phin, which must have been nine or ten feet in length, has been discovered. A third kind of dol- phin, different from any now living, has been found in the department of L'Orne, while a fourth, also* found in the Landes, nearly if not wholly resembles the ordinary dolphin. In Provence a cetaceous animal of an unknown species is found, somewhat like the hyperodons. In the neighbourhood of the Ochil hills in Scot- land the fragments of a whale's bones have been found in a recent alluvial stratum, at only eighteen inches' depth, with a part of a deer's horn near- It must have been a whale of some size, as the ver- tebrae were eighteen inches broad, and one of the ribs ten feet long. But it is most probably one of a kind still existing in our seas, from the place where it was found. In the mountains near Piacenza there have been found the bones of a small whale. Its length was twenty-one feet (near twenty-three of ours) and its head was six feet (near six feet and a half) long. The place where these bones lay was a clay stratum 204 FOSSLL OSTEOLOGY. with numberless shells all round, and oysters cling- ing to the bones. This animal was in a terti- ary formation, six hundred feet above the plain of Italy. It appears to be of a new species. In the very heart of the city of Paris have been found the bones of another whale, far larger, and of a species wholly unknown. Its head must have been fifteen or sixteen feet long, and its body fifty- four or fifty-five. It was found in a compact sandy bed in digging under the cellar of a wine-mer- chant. The conclusion to which these Researches un- avoidably lead is that the earth in its former state did not differ more widely in the races which in- habited it than the sea did— that ocean which was itself the great agent in producing many of the changes that have at various times swept away one race of living creatures from the surface of the globe, and mixed up their remains with those of animals engendered in its own bosom. VIII. We have now reached the last and the most singular portion of these Researches ; the .examination of Reptiles whose relics are found in many of the stratified rocks of high antiquity. In the calcareous schist, near Monheim, whence the stones used in lithography are gotten, a new species in the crocodile family is found, whose length must have been about three feet. At Bol 7 , in Wirtemberg, another, apparently of the sa r 3 kind, has been discovered. At jCaen oolite quarries, a different and equally unknown species is traced ; its body is between four and five feet long, and its whole length thirteen. Others of this family have been found in the Jura, and there they are accom- panied by the fresh-water tortoise. At Honfleur CUVIER. 205 another species is found, and the remains of two other unknown kinds have been discovered near Harfleur and Havre. Beside the remains of crocodile animals found in these more ancient strata, there are many also found in the more recent beds, where the bones of the palseotheria and lophiodons are deposited. The Paris Basin, the marl pits of Argenton, Brentford, and other places have furnished these specimens. But whether they were of different species from those new ones found at Monheim, Caen, and Honfleur, the examination which they had under- gone in Cuvier's time was too imperfect to deter- mine. They have since been shown to be different. It deserves to be remarked of the new species of crocodiles, that their difference from the known kinds exceeds in manifest distinctness that of almost any other animals which are of the same genus, and do not differ in size ; for the vertebrae, instead of be- ing, as they are in the crocodiles now alive, concave in the front and convex behind, are convex in front and concave behind. This at once furnishes a very triumphant answer to those doubts which have been raised as to the novelty o*f the species, jmd still more signally discomfits the speculations of those who fancy that the difference perceived in fossil bones has been caused by change of temperature or bf diet, or by the passing from the living to the petrified state. The examination of fresh-water tortoises, of the genus trionix, whose remains are found in the plaster quarries and other strata, offers similar re- sults. Thus at Aix in Provence a trionix Of a new species is found. Another species, also new, is found in the Gironde ; and two others have been K 206 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. traced less distinctly in the gravel beds of Haute- vigne (Lot et Garonne) and of Castelnaudary.* Fossil fresh-water tortoises, of the genus emys ? give the same results. They are found in the molasse of Switzerland, in the Sheppy clay near London, and in the limestone ridges of the Jura. Fossil sea tortoises offer the like appearances. One of an unknown species is found near Maestricht, the genus being still living in the sea, and familiar to our observation. So that altogether the exami- nation of tortoise remains leads to the same infer- ences of islands having existed in the ocean at a former period, inhabited chiefly by reptiles or ovi- parous quadrupeds, and before the creation of any considerable number of the viviparous orders. As we proceed towards the close of these Re- searches the subject rises rather than fall's off in curiosity and interest. We now come to the fa- mily of lizards, by which is here understood all the old genus of Lacerta (Lin.), excepting the croco- dile and salamander tribes. In the celebrated fossil fish deposits of Thuringia are found the remains of a monitor, of a species somewhat varying from the known species in two particulars, a greater elevation of the vertebral apophyses, and a longer leg in proportion to the thigh and foot. Remains of a similar aspect occur in France near Autun, and in Connecticut in. North America. In the strata of fine and granular chalk near Maestricht, between 400 and 500 feet in thickness, are found the remains of a huge reptile, which Mr. Fan jas 'represented as a crocodile, following the opinions of the people in that neighbourhood ; but * Eight species have now been traced. cuvies. 207 so celebrated an anatomist as Adrian Camper was not to be thus deceived, and he proved it to be an animal of a new genus, related to the monitor, and also to the iguana ; it seems to be placed be- tween the fishes on the one hand and the monitors and iguanas on the other. But the size constitutes its most remarkable difference when compared with these. They have heads five or six inches long ; his was four or five feet, and his body fifty. He was therefore a lizard exceeding the size of a cro- codile ; just as the extinct tapir was the size of an elephant, and the megalonyx was a sloth the size of a rhinoceros. It appears that, like the crocodile, he was aquatic and could swim ; and that his tail was used as a scull, moving laterally in the water, and not up and down like the cetacea, an order to which the elder Camper at first rashly referred him. In the canton of Meulenthal, at Monheim, ten feet below the surface, and near some kinds of crocodile remains, bones were discovered of another unknown sub-genus of the order Saurus, and which Cuvier calls Geosaurus, and places between the crocodile and the monitor. It was apparently twelve or thirteen feet long, that of Maestricht being fifty. A large animal of this family is found to have been an inhabitant of the same ancient world. At Stones- field, in the neighbourhood of Oxford, Dr. Buck- land discovered his remains in a bed of oolitic calca- reous schistus under a solid rock of forty feet thick. The thigh bone is two feet eight inches in length, which would seem to indicate a body in the whole forty -five feet long. But even if his tail were not in the proportion of the lizard's, as this calculation assumes, his length must be, according to the cro- k2 208 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. codile's proportions, thirty feet. This animal ap- proaches the geosaurus of Monheim, and also, in other respects, has some affinity with the crocodile -and monitor ; but in size he greatly exceeds the cro- codile, and comes nearer the whale. His voracity must, from his teeth and jaws, have been extreme. He was also an amphibious animal ; for his remains are surrounded with marine productions. The ge- nus has been called Megalo-saurus. Teeth and bones of the same genus have been since discovered in Tilgate Forest, Sussex. Mr. Mantel has found in the same place the thigh bone of a much larger animal. Other reptiles have been found in the Muschelkalk quarries near Luneville. But there are animals of the family of saurus yet more strange, if not for their size, at least for their anomalous structure and habits. A reptile is found of a genus so extraordinary as to compre- hend within itself the distinguishing nature both of the lizard and the bird. It has a very long neck, and the beak of a bird. It has not, however, like a bird, wings without fingers to strengthen them ; nor has it wings in which the thumb alone is free like a bat ; but the wings spread by a single long finger, while the other fingers are short, and with nails like the fingers of ordinary apterous (or unwinged) animals. From these circumstances Cuvier has named this genus* the Pterodactylus>\ It was first discovered by the late Mr. Colling a Florentine, settled at Manheim, and formerly at- tached to the family of Yoltaire, of whom he published some memoirs. The skeleton, nearly perfect, was found in the marly stone beds of * There are now ten species observed, f Urepoy, wing ; 5 than two feet in diameter at the root, and six feet m girth. There can be little doubt that it was used both as a weapon of defence and to support the animal in conjunction with part of his large feet, while the others were employed in digging. or scraping away the earth in quest of his food. The lore feet were a yard long, and the bones of the fore legs were so constructed that the limb could have a lateral or rotatory horizontal move- ment for the purpose of shovelling away the soil. The bone of the heel is also of extraordinary length. The proportion of his bones to those of the elephant is very remarkable. The first caudal vertebra in the megatherium being twenty or twenty-one inches, in the elephant ir is barely seven. The circumference of the thigh in the former is two feet two inches, in the latter one foot. The expanse of the os illii in the former no less than five feet one inch, in the latter three feet eight inches. The bony cover of the hide has also been now more fully examined. It was about an inch in thickness, and so hard as to resist all external violence. The cumbrous movements of this unwieldy creature exposing it to many kinds of danger, the hide served to defend it from some ene- mies, and the weight and strength of its limbs and tail enabled it to destroy others ; escape from any by flight being quite impossible. Mr. Clift informs me that he has found in the region of the pelvis small lumps of adipocire. So that we have here I an additional instance of the softer parts of an ex- tinct animal still preserved in a state to which flesh is now often reduced by decomposition in water.. 244 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. Mr. Darwin (grandson of the celebrated physi- cian and poet) has found in South America many interesting- remains. Among these are the bones of an edentate, between the megatherium and arma- dillo (largest kind) ; those of a huge rodent in size equal to the hippopotamus ; and those of an ungulate quadruped the size of a camel, and forming the link between that class and the pachy- dermata. In the lias stratum of Lyme Regis there was found in 1828, by Miss Anning (to whose skill in drawing, as well as her geological knowledge, Cuvier often acknowledges his obligations), a new species of pterodactylus with very long claws, and hence Dr. Buckland gave it the name of Pter. Macronyx. It appears to have been the size of a raven. In 1824, Mr. Mantell discovered in the Tilgate sandstone, in Sussex, the remains of an herbivorous reptile allied to the iguana genus, but vastly larger ; and he gave it the name of Iguanodon.* Other parts of the animal have since been found in different places, as in Purbeck, and in the Isle of Wight. Mr. Murchison found a thigh bone three feet seven inches long; and in 1829, a metacarpal bone, of six inches long by five wide, was found in the iron sand, and a vertebra as large as an elephant's. The opinion of Cuvier referred the large thigh bone clearly to Mr. Mantell's reptile, whose dimen- sions must therefore have been enormous, though it was not carnivorous. In 1834, a large proportion of the skeleton was * This discovery had been made before the last edition of* Cuvier's book, and is mentioned, though shortly, in the Ana- lysis. cuvier's successors. 245 found in the Kag quarries near Maidstone. This confirmed all the previous conjectures as to the bones separately discovered. The length of this . monstrous reptile is calculated to have been seventy feet from the snout to the tip of the tail, the tail to have been fifty-two feet long, and the body fourteen feet round.* Mr. Mantell also discovered in 1832, in Tilgate Forest, the remains of a lizard, which may have been twenty-five feet long, and was distinguished by a set of long, pointed, flat bones on its back, some rising from it as high as seventeen inches in length. He called it Hylceosaurus^ from being found in the Weald. There were found in 1836, a great collection of fossil bones in the department of Gers, in France, in a tertiary fresh-water formation. Above thirty species, all mammalia, were traced, and of these the greater part were new extinct animals, but all were of extinct kinds; two species of the dinothe- rium ; five of the mastodon ; a new animal allied to the rhinoceros, and another to the anthracothe- rium ; a new edentate ; and a new genus between the dog and racoon; but the most singular and new of the whole is the under jaw of an ape, which appears to have been thirty inches in height. But we must be very cautious in giving our assent to this, until we are better informed of the position Avhere the jaw was found. It is certainly possible •; but after the history of the Guadaloupe skeleton, clearly human, as clearly found among fossil re- mains, but now universally admitted to have been a recent deposit, we may pause before concluding that a deposit contrary to all other observations of * Geol. Trans. N. S. vol. iii. pt. 2. 246 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. fossil bones should have occurred in any tertiary- formation.* In the time of Cuvier, at least before the com- pletion of his great work, our knowledge was so . scanty of the fossil osteology of the East, that we doubt if any allusion to it is ever made by him. Three most important contributions to this branch of science have since extended our knowledge in that direction, and a rich addition may soon be expected from Mr. Clift's labours upon a large recent arrival. The first was by my excellent friend Mr. Crau- furd, who, travelling in the Burman empire, was fortunate enough to discover a great number of fossil remains near the river Irawadi. These he generously gave to the Geological Society, and Mr. Clift proceeded to examine them with his wonted assiduity and skill. Among them were traced two new species of mastodon, in addition to the M. gigas, and M. angustidens, of Cuvier. One is termed by Mr. Clift Latidens, from the breadth of his jaw teeth ; and the bones of his face exceed in size those of the largest Indian elephant. The other he calls M. Elephantoides, because his teeth ap- proach much nearer the elephant's than those of Cuvier's species, or of the Laticlens. This animal appears to have been smaller than the elephant. A hippopotamus smaller than the living animal, a rhinoceros, a tapir, and others, have also been '■ * I have lately seen an appearance of a stratum of calcare- ous matter, which a cursory observer would certainly have supposed to be a natural deposit in the ground ; but its history was known from some rubbish through which lime had fil- tered, when part of Buckingham House was built, and there were bricks, tiles, &c., underneath it. 247 traced among these remains, as have a new lizard near the garial, and a crocodile near the common animal.* The second of these discoveries was made on the north-east border of Bengal, at Carivari, near the Brahmaputra river. The remains were examined by Mr. Pentland. He traced a new species of anthracotherium, which he . calls Silicestre, a new carnivorous animal of the weazel tribe, and a pachy- dermatous animal much smaller than any hitherto known, either living or fossil. f The third and most remarkable of these col- lections is one discovered in the Markanda valley, and the Sivalik branch of the Himalaya moun- tains, in the year 1835. The curiosity of naturalists in India was immediately roused, and their industry directed towards the subject with that ardour which the relaxation of a sultry climate never abates, and that combined perseverance and ability which has ever marked the great men of our eastern settle- ments. Dr. Falconer and Captain Cautley have chiefly signalized themselves in this worthy pursuit ; valuable aid has likewise been rendered by Lieut. Durand ; and the result of their labours occupies one-half of the Asiatic Researches for 1836. They found first of all a new animal, of the ruminating class, whose skull is the size of a large elephant's, and which has two horns rising in a peculiar manner from between the orbits, with an orifice of great breadth and an extraordinary rising of the bones of the nose. They gave it the name of Siv ather ium, from the place of its discovery, dedi- cated to the deity Siva. The breadth of the skull * Geol. Trans. N. S. vol. ii. pt. 3. f Tb. 248 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. is twenty-two inches. Dr. Buckland has no doubt that it must have had a trunk, something interme- diate between the elephant's and tapir's. They next found a hippopotamus of a new species, dis- tinguished by having six incisive teeth, and a skull materially different from the other species, whether living or extinct. A new species of tiger was also discovered, which they called Felis Cristata, dis- tinguished chiefly by the great height of the occi- pital bone. In the same place with these bones were found remains of the mastodon, and other known species of extinct animals ; but the most in- teresting discovery was that of a camel, of which the skull and jaw were found. It is to be observed that no decisive proof of any of the Camelidse, either camel, dromedary, or llama, had ever been hitherto found among fossil bones, although Cuvier had proved certain teeth brought from Siberia to be undoubtedly of this family, if they were really fossil, which he doubted. This discovery in India was therefore extremely interesting, as supplying a wanting genus. But for this very reason it became the more necessary to authenticate the jDosition of this supposed camel's remains the more clearly, especially as there were abundance of existing camels in the country, which there could not be in Siberia. The Indian account is somewhat deficient in this respect, leaving us in doubt whether the bones admitted to bear a very close resemblance to the living species, were found in a stratum or loose and detached.* * Asiatic Researches, vol. xix. pt. 1. Still more recently, it is said, a bone of the genus Simia has been found in the Sivalik Hills, and another in digging at Calcutta ; hut the particulars are unknown to me. cuvier's successors. 249 Besides all these additions to our knowledge of species and genera, two remarkable observations or sets of observations have been first made by osteo- logists since the time of Cuvier. The one of these is the tracing of footsteps, the print of which has been left by animals upon the sand, or other mate- rial of the strata, while in a soft state. The other is Dr. Buckland's study of the intestines from their fossil contents, which he has called coprolites.* The first of these curious inquiries is conducted by observing the impressions which the softer and more destructible parts of animals, whose very race has been extinct for ages, made upon the earthy strata of a former world ; it is the object of the other inquiry to ascertain from the petrified faeces bearing the impress of the alimentary canal, the internal structure of extinct animals ; and both subjects are certainly calculated powerfully to arrest our attention. The footsteps, it appears, were first observed by my reverend and learned friend, Dr. Duncan (to whom the country is also so deeply indebted as the author of savings' banks), in Dumfriesshire. On examining a sandstone quarry, where the strata lay one over the other, or rather against the other, for they had a dip of forty-five degrees, he found these prints not on one but on many successive layers of the stone ; so that they must have been made at distant periods from each other, but when the strata were forming at the bottom of the sea. No bones whatever have been found in those quarries. Similar impressions, though of smaller animals, have been observed in the Forest marble * Koirpos, feces ? \i8os, stone. 250 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. beds near Bath. The marks found in Dumfries - shire, of which there were as many as twenty-four on a single slab, formed as it were a regular track with six distinct repetitions of each foot, the fore and hind feet having left different impressions, and the marks of the claws being discernible. They appear to have been made by some animal of the tortoise kind.* But similar marks have since been found in other parts of the world. At Hessberg, in Saxony, they have been discovered in quarries of grey and red sandstone alternating ; the marks are much larger than those in Scotland, and more dis- tinct. In one .the hind foot measures twelve inches in length, and the fore foot is always much smaller than the hind. From this circumstance, and from the distance between the two being only fourteen inches, it is conjectured that the animal was a mar- supial, like the kangaroo. But one of the most remarkable circumstances observed is, that the upper stratum has convex marks answering to the concavity of the lower slab on which it rests, clearly showing that the former was deposited soft after the latter had been first printed by the foot in a soft state and then somewhat hardened. Dn Kaup has termed the large unknown animal Chiro- theriumrf from the supposed resemblance of the four toes and turned-out thumb to a hand. In the summer of 1838 similar footsteps of the chirothe- rium, and of four or five small lizards and tortoises, with petrified vegetables of a reedy kind, have been observed in the new red stone at Storeton Hill quarry in Cheshire, near Liverpool. A discovery has within the last two years been made in the * Edin. R. S. Trans. 1828. f Xap, hand. cutter's SUCCESSORS. 251 state of Connecticut, near Northampton, where the footsteps of various birds, differing exceedingly in size, are found in inclined strata of sandstone, and evidently made before it assumed its present posi- tion. The marks are always in pairs, and the tracks cross each other like those of clucks on the margin of a muddy pond. One is the length of fifteen or sixteen inches, and a feathery spur or ap- pendage appears to have been attached to the heel, eight or nine inches long, for the purpose of enlarg- ing the foot's surface, and, like a snow-shoe, pre- vent the animal's weight from sinking it too deep. The distance between the steps is proportioned to their length, but in every case the pace appears to have been longer than that of the existing species of birds to which they approach nearest, the ostrich. Consequently, the animal must have been taller in proportion to his size. How much larger he was than the ostrich may be gathered from this, that the large African ostrich has only a foot of ten inches long, less than two-thirds of this bird, and yet stands nine feet high. These proportions would give a height of fourteen feet to the extinct animal. Some of the footsteps in the Storeton Hill quarry are eighteen inches in length. In the Forest marble of Bath the foot-marks of small marine animals are descried. In examining the inside of the ichthyosaurus, the half-digested bones of the animals on which these ravenous creatures preyed are found in large masses. But there are also scattered in great abun- dance among their fossil remains the faeces which they voided ; and these being in a petrified state have preserved the very form of the intestines in minute detail. The fascal matter is generally dis- 252 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. posed in folds, wrapt round a central axis spirally. Some of these coprolites exhibit the appearance of contortion, and show that the intestines of the animal were spirally twisted ; others, especially the smaller ones, give no such indications. The scales and bones of the prey are distinctly to be traced in the mass ; these are the remains, undigested, of contemporary fishes and reptiles, including smaller ones of the beast's own tribe, on which he appears to have fed, as well as on other species. The light which these coprolites throw upon the structure of the animal's intestinal canal is sufficiently remark- able. The intestines are proved to have been formed like an Archimedes screw, so that the ali- ment in passing through was exposed within the smallest space to the largest surface of absorbent vessels, and thus drained of all its juices, as we find in the digestive process of living animals. The similar structure of the intestinal canal in the sharks and dogfish now existing has been noticed by naturalists ; and Dr. Paley expressly refers to it as making compensation by its spiral passage for its being straight, and consequently short, compared with the intestinal passage in other animals. We also can distinctly trace in these coprolites the size and form of the folds of the mucous membrane that lined the intestines, and of the vessels which ran along its surface. As there is no part of the ani- mal frame more easily destructible than the mu- cous membrane and its vessels, the preservation of its casts is certainly a peculiar felicity for the phy- siologist. Similar observations have, since Dr. Buckland's discovery, been made upon the copro- lites of fossil fishes, in the Lyme Regis lias, in Sussex, in Staffordshire, and near Edinburgh. In cuvier's successors. 253 some places they take so fine a polish that lapidaries have used them for cutting into ornamental wares. One of the most singular coprolites was found by Lord Greenock (an assiduous and successful cultiva- tor of natural science) between the laminae of a block of coal near Edinburgh, and surrounded with the scales of a fish recognised by Professor Agassiz as of contemporary origin. To these observations a very curious addition has been made by the Pro- fessor, who found that the worm-like bodies de- scribed by Count Munster, in the lithographic slate of Solenhofen, are in fact the petrified intes tines of fishes, and he has also found the same tor- tuous bodies occupying their ordinary position between the ribs in some fossil remains. He has named them Coleolites ;* and certainly the repre- sentation given of them in the drawing resembles an actual intestine as accurately as if it were the portrait of it. When Cuvier abandoned to Professor Agassiz the whole department of Fossil Ichthyology, he showed as happy and just a discernment of living character as he ever displayed in the arrangement and appropriation of animal remains. That ad- mirable person has amply earned the honour thus bestowed on him by devoting his life to this ex- tensive, obscure, and difficult study. The results of his laborious researches have been from time to time published in a great work upon fossil fishes ; but as the arrangement followed as yet in the pub- lication necessarily leaves the several parts incom- plete, a distinct and satisfactory view of the whole cannot be formed until the work is finished. Some * Kw\ov, the great intestine. 254 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. of the discoveries, however, which bear upon the subject of our present inquiries may be shortly de- scribed. The importance of the study to fossil geology is manifest from this, that the class of fishes being continued through the successive periods of the different formations, while those of land ani- mals are confined each within certain limits, and the fishes being also inhabitants of those waters in which all the aqueous deposits once were con* tained, we are enabled by Fossil Ichthyology, through various periods of the earth's formation, to pursue the comparison of a vertebrated animal's condition in each stage. The Professor's classification is founded upon the form of the scales, which are adapted to the structure of each tribe, and afford a perfectly scien- tific principle of arrangement. He thus divides the whole into four orders : — the Placo'ideans* whose scales are irregular enamel plates more fre- quently broad, but varying in dimensions down to a point or prickle ; the Gano'ideans,^ with angular scales of bone or horn thickly enamelled and shining ; the Ctenoideans,^ with comb-like scales having a jagged edge and no enamel ;§ the Cyclo'i- deans,\\ whose scales are smooth at the edge, and composed of horn and bone, but unenamelled.1T There were in all 8000 species of fish enumerated by Cuvier, of which more than three-fourths, or 6000, belong to the two last classes, and no one of either of these classes has ever been found in any formation anterior to the chalk ; so that the whole of these 6000 kinds of fish have, to all appearance, * m«|, a tablet or plate, f r«v*?, brilliancy. X Ktbis, a comb. § Perch belong to this class. j] KvkXos, a circle. \ Salmon and herring are of this class. CUVIEE. S SUCCESSORS. 255 been called into existence at a period long- after the primitive, the transition, and all but the latest secondary formations. On the other hand, and in the earlier times of the secondary and transition strata, there existed species of the other two orders, which have comparatively few representatives sur- viving to our days. The Professor has thoroughly examined 800 fossil species of these two orders, and finds not a single exception to the rule thus laid down for the relation between different species of animals and successive formations of strata.* His deductions received further corroboration by the examination of 250 species, all of new and extinct fishes, submitted to him in England, and which were, for the most part, found in this country. The analogy in this respect between the results of Fossil Ichthyology and those of Cuvier's Researches is striking throughout. In the lower deposits of the lias there are found the remains of the great sauroid fishes analogous to the fossil lizards of the same strata. More than two-thirds of the fishes found in the chalk strata are of genera now extinct. These extinct genera, however, of the newest secondary strata approach more nearly to the fishes of the tertiary strata than the fishes found in the oolite or Jurassic formation ; insomuch that the Professor is disposed to range the chalk and green - sand nearer to the tertiary than secondary form- ations on this account. Not a single genus even of those whose species are found in the Jurassic deposits is now known among existing fishes ; nor is there a single species, and but few genera com- mon to the chalk, and the older tertiary strata. * Rapport sur les Poissons Fossiles, 1835, p. 38. M 2 256 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. A third of those found in the strata of the later tertiary formation, as the London clay and the coarse limestone of the Paris Basin, are of extinct, genera. The Norfolk crag and upper sub-appen- nine formation have, for the most part, genera found in the tropical seas ; the tertiary formation gene- rally approaches nearest to our living species, but the Professor affirms that, except one small fish, found in modern concretions on the coast of Greenland, not a single species exactly the same with those of our seas is to be found in a petrified state. This continued analogy is very important in a geological view. In a zoological view it would be endless to attempt any analysis of the Professor's researches. Among the extinct species no less than 150 belonged to the family of sharks, whose services, in keeping down the increase, naturally so rapid, of fishes, have been required in all ages of the ocean. Different kinds of shark, however, appear to have belonged to different periods. Of the three sub-families into which the Professor divides the great class of sharks, the first is found in the earliest period of organic remains, the transition strata, and continues till the beginning of the tertiary, but there is now only one species of it existing, and that is found in New Holland. The second sub-family begins pro- bably with the coal formations, and ceases when tlD chalk commences. The third begins with the chalk, and continues down through the tertiary formation to the present time. The form as well as the size of the extinct species differ in most things mate- rially from the living, and in no respect do they vary more than in their covering or scales. As the coprolites enable us to ascertain the inte- cuvier's successors. 257 rior structure of the extinct reptiles, so do they throw light upon that of fishes also, those especially of the sauro'id or lizard-like kind. We have even instances of their intestines being partially pre- served by some fortunate accident. An example near Solenhofen has been mentioned already. A specimen was found in Sussex, where the stomach, with its different membranes, was retained. In a number of fishes found in the Isle of Sheppy the bony capsule of the eye was found entire ; and in some other instances the plates forming the gills or branchiae are perceivable. It thus appears that great and important ad- ditions have been made to this interesting science since Cuvier, who may properly be termed its founder, ceased from his labours. But it would not be proper to pass from a consideration of the services rendered by his successors, without making mention of one illustrious inquirer, a man of truly original genius, who preceded him by a few years. John Hunter, whose unrivalled sagacity seemed destined to cast a strong light upon whatever walk of science he trod, had turned his attention, as early as 1793, to fossil bones, in consequence of a collection sent to this country by the Margrave of Anspach. He described and commented upon them in detail with his wonted acuteness ; he adopted the same safe and natural course which Cuvier afterwards pursued with such signal success, of examining the known bones of existing species as well as those submitted to his consideration ; and it appears, from some of his concluding re- marks, that he perceived distinctly enough the specific difference of the fossil animals, at least of some among them. Thus, having compared the 258 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. fossil skull of a supposed bear with that of a white bear which he had procured from the owner of the animal while alive, he gives an accurate drawing of both, and marks their diversities, indicating his opinion that the fossil animal differed from all known carnivorous animals.* Who does not per- ceive that he was on the right track, and would have reaped a plentiful harvest of discovery, had he devoted himself to the general investigation of the subject ?f II. The speculations of succeeding zoologists or comparative physiologists have not only made no impression upon the anatomical results of Cuvier's inquiries, but they never appear to have been pointed towards that object. Considering the numberless instances in which he had to draw his conclusions or to form his conjectures from a very imperfect collection of facts, it is wonderful how constantly the fuller materials of his followers have confirmed his inferences. But geological inquirers have oc- casionally impugned his doctrines respecting the relation of the classes of animals to the successive formations of the strata that incrust our globe. It has been denied by some that any such relation at all can be truly said to exist. There seems, how- ever, no possibility of maintaining this position, whether we agree wholly with Cuvier or not in the detail of his statements. For the fact is undeniable that some strata, let them have been arranged in * Phil. Trans. 1794, p. 411. f In the Hunterian Museum there is a large collection of fossil organic remains, selected with consummate skill, and showing the attention bestowed by this great man on the most delicate parts of organization which they exem- plify. cuvier's successors. 259 whatever succession, formed and placed by what- ever causes, contain the remains of certain classes of animals which are not to be found in other strata. It is another fact equally indisputable, that no animals now exist of the same kind with the greater part of those found in any of the strata. This appears to connect the different races of ani- mals with the different strata. But it is said that this is not a chronological connexion, and affords no evidence of strata having been formed rather in one age than another. If it were so, there still would remain a foundation for the position which merely affirms a relation between organic remains and strata. But is it true ? The principal reason assigned is, that although no animals of a certain kind are found in certain strata, supposing those strata to have been formed at a given period, the animals of the kind in question may have perished so as not to have been washed into the sea or other water in which the earthy matter was mixed, and from which it was deposited. Now, not to men- tion that this bare possibility becomes improbable in the degree in which the facts are multiplied and the observations of animals and strata extended, the researches respecting fossil fishes seem to nega- tive the objection entirely. For if the different strata were made by the sea, and contain totally different remains of marine animals, it is clear that each must have been formed respectively in a sea inhabited by different animal tribes. The strict parallelism, too, which is observed between the con- nexion of different races of animals and that of fishes with different strata, lends the strongest con- firmation to Cuvier's doctrines. Ingenious and laborious attempts have been made 260 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. to show, that though many races of animals are now wholly extinct, the evidence fails to prove the non-existence of any race (except our own) at a preceding period ; in other words, to disprove the proposition that many of the present races came ibr the first time into existence at a period subse- quent to the time when we know that others existed, always excepting the human race, which it is ad- mitted we have sufficient reason to believe did not exist in the earlier stages of the globe's formation. It cannot, however, be denied, first, that the ex- tinction of many races of animals, which is admit- ted, affords a ground of itself for thinking it probable that new ones should be found to supply their places ; secondly, that there seems nearly as little reason to regard the utter extinction of some classes as more improbable than the formation of others ; thirdly, that the admitted creation of man destroys the whole support which the objection might derive from a supposed uniformity of natural causes, al- ways acting, and removes the difficulty said to exist, of assuming different sets of principles to be in action at different periods of the world ; fourthly, that the great number of facts which have been observed, all pointing uniformly in one direction, cannot be got over by suggesting mere possibilities for explanations. The improbability is extreme of one set of animals having existed at the same age with another set, when we find certain strata having the traces of the former without any of the latter, and vice versa. This improbability increases in proportion to the number of the species. If these exceed hundreds, and even amount to many thou- sands, the improbability becomes so great as to reach what, in common language, we term a moral cuvier's successors. 261 impossibility. Now, there are 6000 kinds of fishes, of which not one specimen is to be found in any of the formations preceding the chalk. But suppose we lay out of view all question of one formation being older than another, there are certain strata in which none of those species are found. There is no disposition to deny that these strata were formed in the water ; therefore, at whatever time they were suspended in the water, that water at that time contained none of those 6000 kinds which now people it. Then from whence did they all come if they existed at that period, and yet were not in the water when the strata were formed ? But it is equally admitted that the water in those days contained many other kinds of fish now extinct, and found only in certain strata, and it contained some few which we find in other strata, and some which are still to be found in the sea. Can any- thing be more gratuitous than to suppose that all the fishes of a certain class were destroyed at the formation of those strata, while all those of another class were afterwards brought from a different part of the sea to succeed the last ones, and a certain small number survived to mix with other strata, or even to last till now ? The only sound objection that can be taken to the theory, is that to which the absolute asser- tion of the fact is liable. We can easily ascertain that certain species are no longer to be found living on {he globe. But we may not be so well able to affirm with certainty that certain fossil genera of one formation may not hereafter be found in an- other, or, which is the same fact in another form, that certain living species may not be traced among fossil remains. Thus the small family of m 3 262 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. the camel was wanting in all our fossil collections till the late discoveries in the Himalaya mountains have made it probable that a species of this class may be found to have existed there with the mas- todon and other extinct mammalia. This is possible, perhaps likely. So an ape's jaw is supposed for the first time to have been found in a fossil bed in France with other races, and no quadrumane had ever been before traced in any part of the fossil world. The proof of this discovery is, however, as yet involved in some doubt, and even were it more precise, we should only have two instances in which the negative evidence had failed, leaving a multitude of others, hundreds of land and thou- sands of sea animals, of which no representatives are to be traced among the fossil remains of any country. It must always be recollected that the whole argument rests upon probability, more or less high. Even as regards the admitted non-exist- ence of the human species, the mere evidence of osteological researches is not demonstrative ; for although it is quite certain that among the thou- sands of animal remains which have been discovered and carefully examined, not a fragment of a human bone is to be found, it is barely possible that in some deposits as yet unexplored the skeleton of a man may be discovered. We have at present only to make our inference square with the facts ; to affirm that, as far as our knowledge extends, there is no such relic of our race in the earlier strata of the globe ; and to conclude that, considering the extent of past inquiries, the regularity of the connexion between other races of different kinds and various strata, and the portions of the eaith over which our researches have been carried the cuvier's successors. 263 very strong presumption is against any such contra- dictory discovery being hereafter made. III. Whatever opinion men may form upon the question raised by some antagonists of Cuvier's geological doctrines, all must allow that consider- able light has been thrown upon the subject of discussion by their labours. Indeed a considerable addition to our knowledge has been made by some of these able and learned men, even admitting that they have failed to impugn the theory, and taking the facts which they have ascertained as forming an addition, by no means inconsistent with it. Thus the valuable work of Mr. Lyell has, in two essential respects, greatly advanced geological knowledge. He has examined, with a much more minute atten- tion than had ever before been given to the subject, the action of the physical agents actually at work before our eyes, and has shown how extensively these may operate upon the structure of the earth's surface. It may be admitted, perhaps, that Cuvier had somewhat underrated their power, although the reader may still retain his opinion, that the force ascribed from the facts to those ordinary phy- sical powers is inadequate to produce the effects which the phenomena present ; that all the violent and sudden actions known on the globe are topical, being confined within comparatively narrow limits, and that the supposition of sudden and even instan- taneous change on a vast scale in former periods has been too lightly taken up. Indeed, unless we suppose such changes as might happen from the dis- ruption of a continent united by a small neck of land, like that which may be found once to have joined Gibraltar and Ceuta, it seems hard to ima- gine how a tract of country, extending from Hoi- 264 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. land to beyond the Caspian, and from Scandinavia to the Carpathian mountains, could be drained of the sea, which certainly once covered it, or, having still more anciently been dry, could have been laid under water.* But a much more important service has been rendered by Mr. Lyell's comparison between the different formations of the tertiary class ; and although it is with unavoidable distrust of himself that any one little versed in geological science should venture to speak, it should seem that the division which he has thus succeeded in tracing of the tertiary period, may stand well with the previous system of Cuvier, and be received as a fact inde- pendent of the controverted matter with which it has been connected. With the important aid of several eminent conchologists, but especially of Mr. Deshayes, he examined the numbers of testaceous animals traced in different formations ; and finding that in some strata the proportion of shells of living species was very different from others, he distributed the strata of this tertiary period into three classes accordingly ; the earliest being those which con- tained the fewest of our living species. The latest of the three periods into which he thus subdivides the tertiary era he calls pliocene ,t or more recent ; the next before miocene,i or less recent ; the earliest eocene, || or dawning. Seventeen species of shells are common to the three divisions, of which * In Mr. Whewell's learned work on the History of the Inductive Sciences, there are some acute and important re- marks on the two theories, that of Uniform Action, and tbut of Catastrophes. B. xviii. c. 8. t Ukuuv, more, and Kuivos, recent. I Muuv, less. II Has, dawn. cuvier's SUCCESSORS. 265 thirteen still exist and four are extinct. In the pliocene the proportion of existing shells always exceeds one-third, and usually approaches one-half of the whole found. In the miocene, the existing shells fall considerably short of one-half, that is, the extinct species preponderate ; indeed, of 1021 examined, less than a fifth were existing. There are 196 common to this and the last period, of which 82 are extinct. In the eocene period, the proportion of existing shells is much smaller, not exceeding three and a half per cent. ; and there are only 42 common to this and the miocene. In the Paris Basin 1122 species have been found, of which only 38 are now known as living. The theory of Cuvier and Brongnart respecting the successive formations in the Paris Basin, ap- pears to require some modification in consequence of more recent examination. They considered that upon the chalk there was laid, first a fresh-water formation of clay, lignite, and sandstone ; then a marine formation of coarse limestone ; and then upon that a second fresh-water formation of silicious limestone, gypsum, and marl. The researches of Mr. Constant Prevost seem to show that instead of these three successive formations, there were laid on the chalk a clay formation of fresh-water origin, and then upon that, contemporaneously, three others, in different parts of the same Basin, namely, a fresh-water formation of silicious limestone, another of gypsum, and a marine formation oi coarse limestone. In the rest of the series the two theories coincide. It must, however, be observed that the more im portant doctrines of Fossil Osteology, even as re- gards their connexion with the history and structure 266 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. of the globe, do not necessarily depend upon the opinions which may be entertained of the more con- troverted points of geological theory, while the science of comparative anatomy exists alone, self- contained and independent of geology. But all must agree in admitting the important service which Osteology has rendered to geological inquiries, and in rejoicing at the influence which it has had upon those who pursue such speculations, in promoting a more careful study of facts, and recommending a wise postponement of theoretical reasoning, until the season arrives when a sufficient foundation for induction shall have been laid by the patient ob- server. ( 267 ) NOTES ON THE FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. NOTE I. As some learned men are satisfied with the proofs of an ape's jaw-bone having been found at Sansan, in the south-west of France, and an astragalus of the same genus in the Sivalik hills, it is very possible that this genus may be added to those found in the strata of the Miocene period ; for it is only in the more recent forma- tions that these remains are supposed to exist. That they should be found in any of the Pliocene formations is in a high degree improbable ; and even then we have only got to the middle of the Tertiary period. No one contends that in the earlier formations any such remains are to be traced. But in case any objection should be raised to the ar- gument in the text, upon the supposition that, because quadrumanous animals were supposed by Cuvier not to be traceable in any but the present portions of the globe's crust, therefore human remains may likewise hereafter be found in earlier formations, we may remark that, even if they were, contrary to every probability, there found, no one pretends to expect such remains in those strata where no mammalia of any kind have been discovered; and the argument in the text is wholly independent of the particular period at which the non-existence of our race is admitted. These considerations are fit to be borne in mind, since learned men, like Mr. Schmerling, are inclined to think that some human bones found in the same caves with the remains of hyaenas and other 268 NOTES ON THE animals, are of contemporaneous origin. The great ma- jority of geologists, however, refer the animals in question to the last geological era before the creation of man. NOTE II. The state of rapid and solid advancement in which the science of Palaeontology now is, may make the summary of its doctrines in any one year little applicable to the next. The notes to the Analysis of Cuvier, and the subsequent account of the labours of his successors, may serve to show what inhabitants of the former surface of the earth are at present within our knowledge. But with respect to the two important classes of ichthyosaurus and plesio- saurus, the following abstract will prove convenient to the student who would compare the present state of our information upon these two fossil genera at present with what it was when Cuvier wrote. Nothing can better exhibit the rate, as it were, at which this science has been advancing. I am indebted to my learned, able, and excellent friend, Mr. Greenough, for this summary, which will be found to be marked with the accuracy, the clearness, and the conciseness which distinguish all his productions : — ICHTHYOSAURUS. 1. Communis .... Cuvier, vol. ii. Lias— England and Wur- temberg. 2. Coniformis .... (See Journal of Acad, of Philadelphia.) Not known to Cuvier. Lias — Bath. 3. Grandipes (Geol. Proc., 1830.) Not known to Cuvier. 4. Intermedius . . . Lias — England and Wurtemberg. 5. Platyodon .... Lias — England and Wurtemberg. 6. Tenuirostris . . . Lias — England and Wurtemberg. 7. Ichthyosaurus . Kimmeridge clay. 8. Ichthyosaurus . Muschelkalk — Luneville and Mannsfield. PLESIOSAURUS. 1. Goldfussii Quarries of Solenhofen. Not known to Cuvier. TOSSIL OSTEOLOGY. 269 2. Carinatus Lias — England and Boulogne. 3. Dolichodeirus . . Muschelkalk — Germany ,• and lias — England. 4. Pentagonus .... Jura beds — France. 5. Profundus Variegated sandstone — Jura. Not known to Cuvier. 6. Recentior Kimnieridge clay. 7. Trigonus Calvados — north of France. 8. Trigonus Cuvier, vol. ii. p. 486. Lias, probably. GENERAL NOTE RESPECTING EVIDENCES OF DESIGN. All the inquiries in which we have been engaged lead to one conclusion of great importance. Notwithstanding the progress which has been made in various sciences, the things which have been discovered and ascertained bear an infinitely small proportion to those of which we are still either wholly ignorant, or imperfectly and dubi- ously informed. In a vast variety of instances, design and intelligence have been traced — instances so well deserving to be called innumerable, that we are entitled to believe in contrivance as the universally prevailing rule, and we never hesitate so to conclude. But the mode and manner of the working is still, in a prodigious number of cases, concealed from us ; and we are entitled to infer that numberless things which now seem irregular, that is arranged according to no fixed rule, are never- theless really disposed in an order which we have not discovered, which would, if we knew all, be as complete as that observed and traced in the cases known to us. Thus the regular working of bees, which we have been examining, is reducible to certain known rules; the figures formed by them are, in all their relations, familiar 270 GENERAL NOTE RESPECTING to mathematicians. The problems of maxima and minima,, on the solution of which those operations proceed, may- have parallels in the case of other animals ; it is not at all improbable that the beaver forms his dike for pro- tection against the water upon some such principle, namely, of the form which is better than any other con- ceivable form calculated to oppose a solid resistance to the pressure of water.* It appears probable that the works of spiders in concentric circles, and along their radii, are also regularly arranged in known figures, and upon similar principles. Many of the parts of plants wear the semblance of regular and symmetrical curve lines, insomuch that a mathematician once presented a paper to the Royal Society (on some propositions in the higher geometry), which he entitled, from the form of the lines investigated, " Fasciculus Florum Geornetri- corum." The orbits in which the heavenly bodies move, come manifestly within the same remark still more certainly ; for the forms of those paths, the relation of all their points to given straight lines, is in a great degree ascertained. But it seems very reasonable to conclude, that the small number of such regular figures which the state of science in its various branches has as yet enabled us to trace, is as nothing compared with those figures still so unknown to us, that in com- mon speech we talk of them as irregular, while this is only a word, like chance, implying our own ignorance. For the mathematical sciences, extraordinary as the progress already made may be reckoned, with regard to the difficulty of the subject, and the imperfect faculties * The base of the dike being 12, the top 3 feet thick, and the height 6 feet, the face is the side of a right angled tri- angle, whose height is 8 feet ; and if the materials were lighter than water in the proportion of 44 : 100, this con- struction would be the best one conceivable to prevent the dam from turning round. But the form flatter than that which would best serve this purpose when the materials are heavier than water, is probably taken to prevent the dam from being shoved forward. EVIDENCES OF DESIGN. 271 of man, are most probably still in their infancy. Of the infinite variety of curve lines, we know but a very few with any particularity, to say nothing; of our equal igno- rance (connected with the former) of most of the laws of complex motion. In the parts of animal and vegetable bodies, especially of the larger kind, there are few sym- metrical forms observed ; greater convenience, in the former instance at least, is evidently attained by other shapes. Yet there seems no reason to doubt that all the forms which we see may be in reality perfectly regular, that is, that each outline is a curve, or portion of a curve, related to some axis, so that each of its parts shall bear the same relation to lines similarly drawn from it to this axis, which all its other points do. If we know little of algebraical curves, we know still less of those whose structure is not expressible by the relations of straight lines and numbers, the class called mechanical or trans- cendental, the forms of some of which are very extra- ordinary, but all whose points are related together by the same law. There is every reason to expect that the further progress of science will unfold to us much more of the principles upon which the forms of matter, both organic and inorganic, are disposed, so that the order pervading the system may be far more clearly perceived. So of motion — In one most important branch, dyna- mics is still in its infancy ; we know little or nothing of the minute motions by which the particles of matter are arranged, when bodies act chemically on each other. Even respecting the motions of fluids so much studied as electricity, and heat (if it be a fluid), and the operation of the magnetic influence, science is so imperfect, and our data from observation so scanty, that mathematical reasoning has as yet hardly ever been applied to the subject. It is the hope of men who reflect on these things, and it is probably the expectation of those who most deeply meditate upon them, that, in future times, a retrospect upon the fabric of our present knowledge, shall be the source of wonder and compassion — wonder at the advances made from such small beginnings — compas- 272 GENERAL NOTE, ETC. sion for the narrow sphere within which our knowledge is confined : — and when the greater part of what we are now only able to believe regular and systematic from analogy and conjecture, will have fallen into an order and an arrangement certainly known and distinctly per- ceived. London :— Printed by W. Clowes and Scns, Stamford Street. BOSTON COLLEGE 3 9031 01654029 6 130207 DOCS NOT CIRCULATE 3* €>cta/u*^t '-.■6 7/ BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS CHESTNUT HILL, MASS. Books may be kept for two weeks and may be renewed for the same period, unless reserved. Two cents a day is charged for each book kept overtime. 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