Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

without the least glimmering of thought or common fenfe, The hen will mistake a piece of chalk for an egg; is infenfible of the increase or diminution of their number; does not diftinguish between her own, and those of another fpecies; is frightened when her fuppofititious breed of ducklings take the water."

But it will be faid, that what reafon could not do for the bird, obfervation, or instruction, or tradition might. Now if it be true, that a couple of fparrows brought up from the firft in a state of feparation from all other birds, would build their neft, and brood upon their eggs, then there is an end of this folution. What can be the traditionary knowledge of a chicken hatched in an oven?

Of young birds taken in their nefts, a few fpecies breed, when kept in cages; and they which do fo, build their nefts nearly in the fame manner as in the wild ftate, and fit upon their eggs. This is fufficient to prove an inftinct, without having recourfe to experiments upon birds, hatched by artificial heat, and deprived, from their birth, of all communication with their fpecies: for we can hardly. bring ourselves to believe, that the parent bird informed her unfledged pupil of the hiftory of

her geftation, her timely preparation of a neft, her exclufion of the eggs, her long incubation, and of the joyful eruption at last of her expected offspring: all which the bird in the cage must have learnt in her infancy, if we refolve her conduct into inftitution.

Unless we will rather fuppofe that fhe remembers her own efcape from the egg; had attentively obferved the conformation of the neft in which he was nurtured; and had treafured up her remarks for future imitation. Which is not only extremely improbable, (for

who that fees a brood of callow birds in their neft, can believe that they are taking a plan of their habitation?) but leaves unaccounted for, one principal part of the difficulty, "the préparation of the neft before the laying of the egg." This fhe could not gain from obfervation in her infancy.

It is remarkable alfo, that the hen fits upon eggs, which fhe has laid without any communication with the male; and which are therefore neceffarily unfruitful. That secret she is not let into. Yet, if incubation had been a fubject of inftruction or of tradition, it should feem that this diftinction would have formed part of the leffon: whereas the instinct of na

ture is calculated for a state of nature; the exception, here alluded to, taking place, chiefly, if not folely, amongst domefticated fowls, in which nature is forced out of her course.

There is another cafe of oviparous œcono-. my, which is still lefs likely to be the effect of education, than it is even in birds, namely, that of moths and butterflies, which depofit their eggs in the precife fubftance, that of a cabbage for example, from which, not the butterfly herself, but the caterpillar which is to iffue from her egg, draws its appropriate food. The butterfly cannot tafte the cabbage. Cabbage is no food for her: yet in the cabbage, not by chance, but ftudiously and electively, the lays her egg. There are, amongst many other kinds, the willow caterpillar, and the cabbage caterpillar; but we never find upon a willow, the caterpillar which eats the cabbage; nor the converfe. This choice, as appears to me, cannot in the butterfly procced from inftruction. She had no teacher in her caterpillar ftate. She never knew her parent. I do not fee, therefore, how knowledge acquired by experience, if it ever were fuch, could be tranfinitted from one generation to another. There is no opportunity either for inftruction

inftruction or imitation. The parent race is gone before the new brood is hatched. And, if it be original reasoning in the butterfly, it is profound reafoning indeed. She must remember her caterpillar state, its tastes and habits; of which memory the fhews no figns whatever. She must conclude from analogy, for here her recollection cannot serve her, that the little round body, which drops from her abdomen, will at a future period produce a living creature, not like herfelf, but like the caterpillar which the remembers herself once to have been. Under the influence of these reflections fhe goes about to make provifion for an order of things, which, fhe concludes, will, fome time or other, take place. is to be obferved, that not a few out of

And it

many,

but that all butterflies argue thus, all draw this conclufion, all act upon it.

But fuppofe the addrefs, and the felection, and the plan, which we perceive in the prepa rations which many irrational animals make for their young, to be traced to fome probable origin; ftill there is left to be accounted for, that which is the fource and foundation of these phænomena, that which fets the whole at work, the σropyn, the parental affection, which I con

tend

[ocr errors]

tend to be inexplicable upon any other hypothefis than that of inftin&.

For we fhall, hardly, I imagine, in brutes, refer their conduct towards their offspring to a fenfe of duty, or of decency, a care of reputation, a compliance with public manners, with public laws, or with rules of life built upon a long experience of their utility. And all attempts to account for the parental affection from affociation, I think, 'fail. With what is it affociated? Moft immediately with the throes of parturition, that is, with pain, and terror, and difeafe. The more remote, but not lefs ftrong affociation, that which depends upon analogy, is all against it. Every thing elfe, which proceeds from the body, is away and rejected.

caft

[ocr errors]

In birds, is it the egg which the hen loves? or is it the expectation which the cherishes of a future progeny, progeny, that keeps her that keeps her upon her neft? What caufe has fhe to expect delight from her progeny? Can any rational answer "be given to the queftion, why, prior to expe'rience, the brooding hen fhould look for pleafure from her chickens? It does not, I think, 'appear, that the cuckoo ever knows her young: yet, in her way, the is as careful in making provision

« VorigeDoorgaan »