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CHAPTER V.

INSTINCT.

Beasts, birds, and insects, even to the minutest and meanest of their kind, act with the unerring providence of instinct; man, the while, who possesses a higher faculty, abuses it, and therefore goes blundering on. They, by their unconscious and unhesitating instinct to the laws of nature, fulfil the end of their existence; he, in wilful neglect of the laws of God, loses sight of the end of his."-SOUTHEY.

PROMISED you a story illustrative of the mysteriously thin line that separates instinct from intelligence.

It is a subject which has occupied the minds of many great men, and will till the end come, but they all leave off just where they began; they can reason and draw conclusions, but what makes the one, or whence the reason of the other, no man can tell.

Nearly all the qualities and characteristics of good men and women are found belonging to brutes: self-help, selfdenial, mutual help, affection, foreknowledge of the most surprising kind, and the most extraordinary skill in preparing for a future life.

Here is an illustration, in my own experience, in the life of a spider.

Now, this creature has little to commend it; it has a bad character almost from everybody. People say it is fierce, cunning, ugly, useless, hateful; nobody, you say, has a good word to say for the spider.

Haven't they?—let us see whether I haven't. One winter month, when spiders are very difficult to find, a lady gave me a spider's nest which she had removed from a snug corner in her garden wall. I put this nest into a small pasteboard box, and carrying this in my pocket all day, at night proceeded to experimentalize on it; but imagine my surprise on opening the box to find the heat of my body had hatched most of the eggs during the day, and the tiny spiders were running in every direction about my trousers pocket.

I found the egg-bag to consist of the most exquisitely fine-spun silk, covering over about 240 eggs; and after clearing out the bag, again imagine my surprise on finding, packed away for a foundation, a fine large dead bluebottle fly.

I might detain you here some time while I related the story of those little spiders-what I did with them, and what they did for me; but I must only ask you to reflect upon the forethought and self-denial of that loving mother, who deprived herself of a delicious meal in order that her 240 babies might have food at hand directly they needed it.

"What a lesson !" you exclaim, asking, perhaps, “ And do all spiders thus provide for their infants?" To which I can only reply, it is with spiders as it is with other animals there are exceptions to the general rule, happily.

Of the spider's instinct compared with human intelligence let me give you another illustration. A boy removed a small spider to place it in the centre of a big spider's web, which was hung among foliage, and distant some four feet from the ground.

The larger animal soon rushed from its hiding-place

under a leaf to attack the intruder, who ran up one of the ascending lines by which the web was secured.

The big spider gained rapidly on the little one, but when the little spider was barely an inch in advance of its pursuer, the small one cut the line behind it, so that the enemy fell to the ground, thus affording time and opportunity of escape along the ascending web. I may remind you that spiders are sometimes cannibal, the larger, the female, frequently turning into web the mangled remains of her husband shortly after the wedding ceremony is over. But what reason is involved in this story; and remember, insects never go to school, nor ever teach each other, nor are they educated at home, but all their knowledge is intuitive— that is, it is born with them.

Shall we compare the instinct of other animals than spiders with that of ants?

Let me first give you a curious illustration of what again sometimes shows the superiority of the instinct in the brute to the intelligence of the man.

Some time ago a gentleman living in the country, thinking his imprisoned canary would like to feel at home in the branches of a tree, hung up the cage containing the bird there; presently his attention was directed to another bird chattering at the prison-bars, holding something in its mouth, which "something" proved to be a worm the visitor to the prison had brought as a delicate morsel for its captive friend.

"Some time ago," too, a friend of mine who was travelling in the country had occasion to stay in some country town where there was a prison. It was an old-fashioned place, and just as years ago our Fleet prison had its prisoners placed in rooms or cells looking through the divisions between the iron bars of the windows into the street, so was it in the place I am describing, but the bars were too close together, of course, to allow anything much bigger than a finger to pass. An acquaintance of one of

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the prisoners passing bad his attention attracted by the other calling to him to get him some beer; but how could a jug pass between those narrow openings? Necessity has been said to be the mother of invention, and certainly in this case the parent might be congratulated on the shrewdness of her offspring, for behold the captive drinking his beer from the small end of a tobacco-pipe which his ingenious acquaintance had borrowed, pouring the drink into the bowl at the outer end!

While describing the comparative instinct of birds with ants, let me relate what happened to a countryman's dog eating his dinner in the fields. It is quoted in Samuelson's "Honey Bee," in a chapter on instinct and intelligence.

Two crows were watching a dog gnawing a bone, of which they were very anxious to obtain possession. The dog, however, kept such a sharp eye upon them that they dared not approach him openly, but one of the crows slipped quietly round to the back of the animal and began to peck at his tail with its beak. No sooner did the dog turn his head to defend himself from this rear attack, than the other crow hopped up, and, seizing the coveted bone, flew off with it.

Here is not only an evidence of design, but a cunning premeditated plot, and it strangely reminds me of what happened with another description of thieves recently near London. A pious family, having a desire that all the members of their household should attend divine service on Sunday evening, left the house on one occasion with no one to take care of its contents; and on their return from church they discovered that thieves had been on the look out, had entered the house during their absence, decamped with all they could carry, and on a piece of paper left behind they had given the text for a future sermon for the inhabitants, "Watch, as well as pray!"

Here's another illustration of instinct in insects curiously

resembling intelligence in man, showing that just as the intelligence of the man may be used for a wrong purpose, so may the instinct in the brute. My friend, a bee-keeper in the country, fond of making observations on men and manners, took one of his bees from one hive to introduce it to the bees of another hive; he first covered the insect over with a quantity of liquid sugar, then placed it in front of the strange hive. Several of the sentinels came to overhaul him, and others presently joined, and he was allowed to enter. The bees had spoken to him with their antennæ, and it appeared, to use my friend's words, as if they had said, "Ah! how d'ye do, old fellow! How very glad we are to see you! pray come in and make yourself at home; but in a minute or two they showed that selfishness can be exhibited even in a bee, for, having licked all the honey from their visitor they then turned him out of the hive, forbidding him to enter again.

Have you ever known the "lord of creation" to act in a similar manner? Alas! it is too commonly the case, I fear, that intelligence may be used, like instinct, for a wrong purpose, to accomplish a selfish end.

Perhaps this is exhibited nowhere more than in the class of insects called the "Praying Mantis"; this word mantis, you must know, comes to us from the Greek, and signifies 66 divine" or " diviner." In Central Africa it is an object of worship. Holding up its long front-legs as if in an attitude of prayer, raised like arms to heaven, it appears the most saintly of insects; and among the superstitions of the poor Hottentots, if by any chance the praying mantis should happen to settle on his person it is considered a special divine favour, and the fortunate person so favoured immediately is looked upon as a saint.

In the South of France, too, where the Mantis religiosa, that is the praying mantis, is commonly found, they call it "Prie Dieu," believing the creature is absorbed in its devotions.