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DIALOGUES ON INSTINCT

WITH

ANALYTICAL VIEW OF THE RESEARCHES

ON

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

BY

HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM, F.R.S.,

And Member of the National Institute of France.

LONDON:

CHARLES KNIGHT AND CO., LUDGATE STREET.

.

London: — Printed by W. Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street.

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
“ Dialogues on Instinct ” and his 66 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
Raley’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.

OF INSTINCT.

PAGE

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 165

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 fine, 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 their 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 nec percunctari
nec 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.” — u Yen-
turn in insulam est. Ilac vero nihil est amcenius ;
utenim hoc quasi rostro finditur Fibrenus, et divisus
equaliter in duas partes latera haec alluit, rapi-
deque dilapsus cito in unum confluit, et tantum
complectitur quod satis sit modicae palaestrae loci ;
quo effecto tanquam id habuerit operis ac muneris
ut 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. Qwest, lib. ii.

t “ We came to the island. But than this spot nothing

B 2

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 wrork and office of providing us with a
seat for our discussion, it straightway falls into the Lii'is.” —
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.

JB. Certainly; and there can here be no diffi-
culty at all in our way ; and, to show you how
little alarmed I am at defining, 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,
almosf 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 fatuns .

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, ancl 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 ?

13. As thus — the physical Instincts are indepen,-

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

b 3

22

INSTINCT.

not merely by denying1 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.

B. 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 do I conceive that

FACTS.

23

any part of 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! — lam
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 a free-will,” like the gentry more
acute than amiable, who held their metaphysical
disputations there.

B. 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 with 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 defined 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.

27

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 ? Fancy
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.

now compose yourself to patience and discussion —
take an extra pinch of snuff — walk about for five m
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
fit to be settled in the outset, in order that our

FACTS.

29

own reasoning may not proceed upon gratuitous
assumption.

JB. 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.

JB . 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 chicken 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.

J5. 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 that the
wasp’s and the Jiee’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 perceivings
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

FACTS.

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 event ; 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 dies 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. You 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 rhom-
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 bv what
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.

JB. 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

c 2

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 chyli-
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

FACTS.

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 performs 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 resent-

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.

JB . 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
tiling 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.

13. 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-

c 3

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.

JB. 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 ?

JB. 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.

J3. Undoubtedly, they have 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
“ 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. <7., 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.

JB . 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.

( 53 )

BOOK 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.

B. The manifest difference between Instinct
and Reason 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 ?

JB. 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. 66 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.”)

THEOKY.

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 — u 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 ?

13. 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 Xloyal
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 ?

13. ISTo ; 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.

B. Ho 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
Prineipia. 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 Descartes’s
genius, “ chalybis instar rigiduin et crudele, quod
uno quasi ictu omnium ferine 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 “ Rigid 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 ?

JB . lie 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 he allows them natural
cunning, or craft, as well as strength — “ imo et puto
nonnullos (animantes) esse posse quse naturalibus
astutiis instructs sunt quibus homines etiam astu-
tissimos decipiant.”* This is anything rather than
describing them as mere machines.!

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, “ niliil est quod respondeam nisi quod si ilia

o8

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 ?

B. 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 lie then comes back to his
favourite topic of its “ being less likely that worms
should have immortal souls, than that they should

cogitant ut nos, animam etiam ut et nos immortalem habent,
quod non est verisimile (“ To which I can only answer,
that if they think as we do, they must also have, like us,
an immortal soul, which is not probable ;”) and 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.

JB. 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 tainen 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?

JB. He goes on to tell you, u 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.

S. 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 66 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 Newton 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

62

INSTINCT.

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 1 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 ” — 66 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, hut 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,

In 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.

JB . 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 1704, had not the queries. The second,

d 2

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 all
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.

JB. 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

j B. 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 mdst 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.

JB. W e 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.

B. 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 ?

B. 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

r~ * 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 ta
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-
boidal 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

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 ?

B. 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
handy work. 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 ?

j 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 did,
something else (and that something the only im-
portant thing), which the agent neither knew nor
intended, and cannot possibly be said to have done

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 ?

-5. 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

THEORY.

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 ?

JB. 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 case : 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

A

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
he 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
indeed 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
of 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 v ords, 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.

13. 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
rarely, 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^xl, cannot form the idea of
such a thing — as an act without power a*id 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 ?

J3. 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 lie

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 fiew
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
mind 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 lie
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 of the 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.

JB. 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 Newtorc

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

84

INSTINCT.

no 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 m 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

THEOilY.

85

and knows these things unknown to the bee? And
we cannot conceive 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.

JB. 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

E

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

NSTINCT.

gratification felt by a fore-ordained law of her
nature, in following those lines and angles, and no
other ?

JB. 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 lias 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, 66 There-
fore I believe they act in like manner.”

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 further 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.

JB . 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?

B. You mean, how do we answer sceptical, or
rather atheistical arguments, drawn from these

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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.

JB. 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.

B . 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.

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 full 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.

H>. 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
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

lias 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
showm, 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 the 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
sized.

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 endr
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 thait 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 Ailing up the hollows in a tree where
water had settled.

A. Or the Crows of whom Darwin speaks in the
north of Ireland, 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.

JB. 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. lie
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 genius
as said once to have come in collision with the head
* Zoonomia, Sec. xvi. 16.

FACTS.

103

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
fake 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 howlhe 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 wrere 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
dogs.

13, 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-todter 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 cab — to get chesnuts out of the fire ? — or
what else is the origin of the phrase cat's 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. iv.

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.

J3. 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 do
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 66 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.

J5. 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. iv., 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 tho

F 2

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 ?

B. 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 writh 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.

JB. 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.

JB. 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.

115

A . Dogs show the greatest talents in learning.
The feats of pointers, but stijl 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.

B. 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 are 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

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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 he? $ ? I know the
accuracy of his observation to equal his great in-
genuity.

j 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 finding and raising the woodcocks, but
in knowing the exact degree of frost which will
drive those birds to springs and rills of unfrozen
wrater. 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 66 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

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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.

JB. 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.

JB . 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 Bees’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

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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,

i2i

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 Haines Barrings
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.

B. The observations of Huber clearly show that
ants have a kind of language by means of their
feelers or antennae ; and every day’s experience4
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

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ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE.

most accurate and literal person, and it tends to
prove that his shooting dogs 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.

B . 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 Zoonomia, 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.

B . 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 dog 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.

B . 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-

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known example of defensive action. I used to ob-
serve with Jmterest 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 ?

j B. 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 (ot afieXrepwg Xeyorrsg) who say that ani-
mals do not really fear, rejoice, remember, rage,
&c., but only do something like fearing, rejoicing,
&c. (w<ro vet 0o/3eio'3'ai, &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 aj'S'pa)7roy a(77ra-
£erai KaS’o ar^poj7roQ eari) ; 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

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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 ?

JB . 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 w^ere 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. Yirey’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 Animanx,

A. Well ; I suppose you rushed upon it to slake
your thirst ?

JB. 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

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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, Til 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.

JB. 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 parts, 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.

J3. 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

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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.

B. 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 66 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,
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
Reason 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 very
satisfactorily the theory of my most learned and
worthy colleague, for whom we all must feel the

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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 powrer 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 ?

JB. 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-

FACTS.

133

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 flights 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. Yirey 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

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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
Home ; 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
poems Brutorum , 1686, in quarto* Another, in
1725, Hermanson de peccatis JBrutorum; this,
however, is printed at Upsal. A third is Schrceder
de Simulacris virtutum in JBrutis Animantibus ,
1691 ; and a fourth, Schrceder de JBrutorum JReli -
gione , 1702. Then, it appears that one Drechsler
wrote, in 1672, a JDissertation 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 JDe 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 awray to an-
other house. I have seen myself, to my great joy,
mingled wTith 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

G 2

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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. F or
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.

JB . 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 — 66 calceis
et vestimentis sumptis, placitum est ut in aprico
maxime patente loco conveniremus — where, a s
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, we chose to meet
in an open and sunny exposure. ” — Cic. De Repub. lib. i.
cap. 12.

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ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE.

of religious belief as involved in the controversy.
How is this, and why should it be ?

JB . 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 ?

JB. 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-
* De l’Esprit. f Proofs of a Conspiracy.

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ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE.

duced ; and 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.

JB . I 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 sixtyr centuries, and never have attempted
in a single instance to store up for after- times the

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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,

g 3

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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
Reason, and generally the Intelligent faculties, of
animals ?

JB. 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 : 66 for,” says he, u 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

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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

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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.

JB. 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 would have for his classification who should
make two divisions of metals or of water, one the

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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 ?

JB. 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 oxy muriatic 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

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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.

JB . Before going to the brute faculties, let us
just cast a glance over the faculties which have
been enumerated as belonging to ourselves, and

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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.

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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-

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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. ISTor is it more
easy to determine the other, which is quite a kin-
dred one, how it is that our taste is formed, and

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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 ?

13. 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

THEORY.

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.

A . 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 unknown
quantity, multiplying it and speaking of m times
x, or dividing it and speaking of one nth 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 ideal 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 ?

B . 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

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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 independent 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 and 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.

JS. What then ? Other sensations pass to his
mind through his senses at the same time. He has
the sensation of form as well as 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

156

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 some 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.

JB . 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-
il

15 8

ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE.

tional mind cannot be denied to the animals, how-
ever inferior in degree their faculties may be to
our own.

JB. 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 stationary,
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. It 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.

JB. 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 difficulty, though not perhaps an insuper-
able one, not certainly so great a difficulty as those
we have considered.

A. Flow did you endeavour to explain, on that hy-
pothesis, the regularity of Reason or Intelligence ?

JB, 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

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 th.e 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.

JB . 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.

S. 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 and
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 the 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 w'orks; 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.

In 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 ; and 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 larvae 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.
W ere they to attack the deer in front, whose weight ex-

ii 3

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, however 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 whelps 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 observers 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 gasr 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. £ 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 lb- 1810.

x lb. 1801.

163

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 flics.
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-WORM.

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 F ulgora.
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 Anal
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 Bay 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 oi
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, ii. 366.

ANALYTICAL VIEW

OF THE

RESEARCHES ON FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY,

AND

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 1 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 Remainders 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

CUVIER.

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 de
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, Daubenton, 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
* ltecherches, 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 naturae , 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 Blumenbach
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 .J 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.

* Recherches, 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 Ilonfleur, 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
climates ; — 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 Paris3 Versailles, Fontainebleau, Estampes,

CUVIER.

181

Meaux, Melun, Senlis, Nangis, and coming close
to Soissons, Gisors, Beauvais, Montereau on the
Yonne, Nogen t 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 clay3 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. The
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*

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 ruminant.

The fourth part is occupied with carnivorous
animals — the fifth with rodents — the sixth with
toothless or edentate animals — the seventh with
marine 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.

CUVIER.

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
Leptorhinus,\ 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 Tctxos, a wall. f From Aenros, 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-
bouringTartars 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 e.enhant.

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
h°g.

. 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 EXctcr /xos, 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 down by
use, the surface of the tooth has a uniformly plane
or uniformly concave surface. The structure of
the vertebrae 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 : /xcuttos, mamilla.

f Five more species have since been discovered.

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, j 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 Anthracotheria.\

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 Dinotheriiim.

t A o(piov, a small hill, eminence, or ridge

X AvQpa£, 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 P alceotherium ,* six, or perhaps seven,
species j 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

* Tlakaios, ancient ; Orjpioi/, 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

*Az/o7rAos, 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 palmotherium 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 palseotherium
and anoplotherium, the Paris Basin affords two
other new genera of pachydermata, the one, called
Chceropotamas* 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, f
of which that found at Nice is like an antelope or

sheep 4

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 Resume 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.”

{ 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 any place.

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.

IY. There are found in caverns both in France,
Germany, Yorkshire, and Devonshire, and in the
fresh- water formation of Yal 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 Yal 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 hyaena*)* 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. J 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
same 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.*

Y. 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
speciesj of the beaver near Rostoff, in the south of
Russia ; another species, also unknown, at (Eningen.

YI. 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.

f Now four are known, and three of lagomys.

{ Two species are now known.

cuyiEK.

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,
which 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 legs 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 thickness
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, palaeotherium, and
anoplotherium do to the pachydermata, or that the
megalonyx and megatherium do to the edentata. He
terms the gexmsZiphius, from its having a sword-like
head. One of these was found near the mouths of the
Phone. 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 have made it probable that this
toe belonged to the Dinotherium.

CUVIER.

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-
tebras 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

FOSSIL, 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 Boll,
in Wirtemberg, another, apparently of the same
kind, has been discovered. At Caen 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 paiseotheria 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 of the species, and 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 of 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.
Faujas represented as a crocodile, following the
opinions of the people in that neighbourhood ; but
* Eight species have now been traced.

CUVIER.

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-

k 2

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, j*
It was first discovered by the late Mr. Collini, a
Florentine, settled at Manheim, and formerly at-
tached to the family of Voltaire, 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 UT€povf wing ; daurvAos, finger.

CUVIER.

209

Aichstadt in the county of Pappenheim ; but Mr.
Collini fell into very great mistakes respecting the
genus of the animal, which he supposed to be of
marine origin, from not accurately investigating its
osteology. The celebrated Soemmering contended
that it was one of the mammalia, resembling a bat,
and other naturalists held the same opinion. But
Cuvier has most satisfactorily shown, chiefly from
its jaws and vertebrae, its shoulder-blade and ster-
num, that it is between a bird and a reptile, a
flying reptile. The tail is extremely short, and
this indicates the animal to have used its wings
chiefly for locomotion : indeed, from its very long
neck, it must have had great difficulty in either
walking or crawling. When at rest, it must have
stood like a bird on its hind legs, and also, like
some birds, have bent back its long neck in order
to support its very large and heavy head. Another
species of the same genus, having a much shorter
beak (for that of the former is longer than the
whole body), has also been found near the same
spot. It is much smaller. V ery scanty remains of
a third species also occur, found in the same quar-
ries. Its size must have been nearly four times
greater than that of the kind first mentioned, and
it must have presented one of the most monstrous
appearances which can be conceived, according to
our present experience of animal nature.

The two last discoveries among the animals of a
former world, which these researches have dis-
closed, remain to be mentioned ; and they are, in
the eyes of the naturalist, the most wonderful of
the whole, although to an unlettered observer they
may appear less strange than the tribe we have
just been surveying. One of them has the muzzle

210

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

of a dolphin, the teeth of a crocodile, the head and
breast of a lizard, the fins or paddles of a whale,
but four instead of two, and the back or vertebrae
of a fish. This has been named the Ichthyosaurus .
The other, being apparently nearer to the lizard, has
been called the Plesiosaurus ;* and has also four
paddles like those of a whale ; the head of a lizard,
and a long neck like that of a serpent. Both are
found in the older secondary strata of the globe ;
in the limestone marl or greyish lias, filled with
pyrites and ammonites, and in the oolite beds of
the formation called Jurassic. They are both
chiefly found in England, and were first discovered
there.

Sir E. Home, in 1814, made the first step in the
discovery of the Ichthyosaurus ; having obtained
some bones found on the Dorsetshire coast, thirty or
forty feet above the level of the sea. He gradually
obtained more of these remains, until 1819-20, when
the discovery was completed. But he seems to have
been unfixed and variable in his opinion respecting
the animal ; and after believing for some time that
it was partly a fish, he ended by believing it to be
no such thing, and changed its name from ichthyo-
saurus, which Mr. Konig had given it, as early as
1814, to Proteosaurus , supposing it to have some
affinity with the proteus as well as the lizard.

The ichthyosaurus is most abundant in the lias
strata in the lower region of the Jura formation. Its
remains are not confined to Dorsetshire ; they are
found in Oxfordshire, Somersetshire, Warwickshire,
and Yorkshire. But at Lyme they abound as
much as those of the palseotherium do in the pits

* UXtjo'los, near

CUVIEK.

211

of Montmartre at Paris. Some few specimens are
found near Honfleur and at Altorf ; in Wirtemberg,
also, a nearly complete skeleton has been disco-
vered. Four* distinct species were ascertained by
Cuvier, chiefly differing from one another by their
teeth, that is to say, as far as their osteology goes.f
In the general features of their bones they all
approximate to one another. The head resembles
that of the lizard, although with material differences,
and even having some other bones. The eyes are
extremely large, differing in this from all the
greater animals both sea and land. The cavity
in some specimens is above a foot in diameter.
Each eye is protected by a shield of bone, composed
of several pieces knitted together. The vertebras
are very numerous. In some specimens as many
as ninety -five are to be seen ; and these differ
entirely from the vertebral system of the lizard,
resembling rather that of fishes, for they are flat
like backgammon, and concave on both sides. The
animal has four fins, or paddles, each composed of
six rows of small bones, nearly one hundred in all,
and so fitting into one another, that he could
paddle about by means of them, moving with more
elasticity than if the bones had formed a single

* Four species have since been added to these,
f It cannot be too steadily kept in mind that when a spe-
cific difference has once been ascertained, so as to distinguish
one of these extinct races from another, the amount of that
difference is no measure at all of the diversity which may
have existed between the two animals. Tribes the most
unlike have general resemblances in the bones, the sub-
stratum on which the muscular parts are placed. Witness
the ease with which unlearned persons, nay, even naturalists
carelessly observing, have taken the skeletons of lizards for
those of men.

212

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

piece. The teeth are sharp. This creature could
only breathe the air, and so must often have come
up to the surface. Yet, again, he could only move
in the water, and was still less able to crawl on
land than even the sea-calf. The length, in some
cases, reaches to twenty-four or twenty-five feet.
In the strata where these bones are found there are
many of the cornu ammonis and other marine
shells, and remains of crocodiles exist in the same
strata.

The plesiosaurus was first observed in 1821, by
Mr. Conybeare and Mr. Delabeche ; and in Cuvier’s
time its remains had only been found in England,
unless those discovered at Honfleur belong to this
genus. The discovery was fully made in 1824.
The distinguishing feature, the long neck, has
many more vertebrae than even a swan’s. In the
fine specimen from Lyme there are in all eighty-
seven vertebrae, of which thirty-five belong to the
neck and twenty-five to the tail. The vertebrae,
though their axis is very short, resemble the cro-
codile’s more than the lizard’s. The teeth are
pointed and slender. The paddles consist of many
bones, in rows like those of the ichthyosaurus ; but
they taper more, consist of fewer pieces, not above
fifty, and are longer than those of the ichthyo-
saurus, nor do they form a kind of pavement like
his. Five species * of this animal were distin-
guished by Cuvier That found at Lyme appears
to have been seven or eight feet long ; but other
species, from one jaw bone which has been dis-
covered, must have reached the length of twenty-
eight feet.

* Three have since been added.

CUVIER.

213

The eighth and last part of these Researches
which we have just surveyed, is remarkable, as re-
gards the skill and diligence of the illustrious
author, for two particulars. First , the extraor-
dinary success of his indefatigable investigation
from very scanty materials derives especial atten-
tion. In some cases he had only one or two bones
to examine and to reason from. In others he had a
far greater number ; sometimes he had the whole
skeleton in scattered parts ; in a few instances the
whole together in their natural juxtaposition and
connexion. But he found where he had many
bones, that from a single one, or from two, he
could have reached the very same conclusions which
the examination of the whole led him to. This
was observable in a very remarkable manner when
he investigated the mosasaurus, or saurus found at
Maestricht. He had not examined more than the
jaw bone and the teeth when he knew the whole
animal ; but he says that a single tooth discovered
it to him : he had got the key ; after that every
other part fell in at once of itself into its proper
place. Secondly ; Although he was not the dis-
coverer of either the ichthyosaurus or plesiosaurus,
and had to tread on ground which his eminent and
able predecessors had gone over, his researches
even here were quite original. He collected all
the evidence, whether by drawings, descriptions,
or models, of what had been before them ; but he
also enlarged his collection of facts by numberless
specimens both of the same kind which they had
examined and of different kinds never submitted to
their view. He investigated the whole as if the
field had been still untrodden and the soil yet
virgin ; and accordingly his work, even in this

k 3

214

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

subordinate branch, is far from being a repetition ;
his inquiries far from being a mere reiteration of
theirs. Where he does not vary or extend the
results at which they had arrived, he carefully con-
firms their propositions, and ascertains the truth of
their learned conjectures ; so that he adds to the
precious monuments of his predecessors, by either
enlarging the superstructure or strengthening the
foundation.

That such a guide to our inquiries is worthy of
all confidence, no one can doubt. That even his
authority, the weight of his opinion, is very great
would be a proposition as indisputably true, if in
matters of science it were lawful for the learned to
pay any deference to mere authority ; yet even
here ignorant men may bow to him, and receive
his doctrine with a respect which they might be
justified in withholding from others. But his system
makes no such appeal, and requires not to be
received upon terms like these. He has given us
without any reserve every particular which his
whole researches presented to his own view, and
preferring the risk of being tediously minute to the
chance of leaving any point unexplained, or any
position without its needful proof, there is not a
fragment of bone which he has ever examined, and
on which he raises any portion of his philosophy,
that he has not both described with the fulness of
anatomical demonstration, and offered to the eye
of his reader in the transcript of accurate and
luminous engraving. His work is accompanied
with between forty and fifty maps and sections of
strata, above 250 plates representing upwards of
3800 skeletons, bones, teeth, and fragments.
These are all presented to the examination of the

CUVIER.

215

expert, in their connexion with the author’s de-
scription both of what the diagrams can, and of
what they cannot, fully represent. But they are
also presented to the uninformed, who can, by
attentively considering them, institute a comparison
between the structure of known and living animals,
and those of which the earth’s strata contain only
the remains. Giving Cuvier only credit for having
correctly written down what he observed, and
accurately represented in his figures the subjects
of his examination, we are enabled to see the whole
ground of his reasoning : we can mark the points
in which a fossil animal resembles a living one,
and those in which the two differ ; and we have
even a higher degree of evidence in behalf of the
author’s conclusions than we have in reading Sir
Isaac Newton’s experiments upon light, because
every thing in this case depends upon configura-
tion, which a drawing can accurately represent,
whereas much in the optical case must needs turn
upon appearances observed by the experimenter, and
which no drawing can convey to our apprehension.

If again we compare the certainty and fulness
of the proof in this case with that which we have
in examining any anatomical proposition, or any
doctrine of natural history, whether of animals or
of plants, we shall still find it of a separate and
higher kind. For in those branches of science
much more is necessarily left to description. The
question here is always one purely osteological as
regards the animals ; and osteology is of all
branches of anatomy, whether human or compara-
tive, the one where most depends upon mere figure,
and where of consequence the reader can approach
most nearly to the observer in weighing the proofs

216

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

on which his demonstration rests. The geological
matter bears but a small proportion to the zoologi-
cal in these inquiries. It is indeed of the highest
importance ; but it is incapable of much doubt,
and admits of no mistake or imposition — for the
strata where the different animal remains have been
found are well known, and, in the very great majo-
rity of cases, are of easy access to all. The sciences
of geology and mineralogy are sufficiently certain,
at least for the main purposes of the inquiry ; the
names and description of the beds of the globe’s
surface are the portions of those sciences upon
which no doubt or difficulty can exist ; and the
great body of Cuvier’s results remains unaffected by
any differences of opinion upon speculative geology.

Thus the comparison stands as to the degree in
which the evidence is made plain to the reader of
Cuvier’s researches, and the reader of other records
of discovery in the inductive sciences. But let us
extend our view a little further, and compare the
proofs before us in these volumes with those reason-
ings upon which the assent of mankind has been
given, and is continued unhesitatingly, to the great
truths of the mixed mathematical sciences. The
reader of the “ Principia ,” if he be a tolerably good
mathematician,* can follow the whole chain of de-
monstration by which the universality of gravitation
is deduced from the fact that it is a power acting in-

* It is the object of the Analytical View of that great
work in this volume to make the demonstration, the proof
on which the Newtonian system rests, so easy as to be fol-
lowed by persons little skilled in mathematical science ;
but the remarks in the text will, it is to be feared, always re-
main well founded. The like may still more be said of the
Analysis of La Place’s Mecanique Celeste.

CUVIER.

217

versely as the square of the distance to the centre
of attraction. Satisfying himself of the laws which
regulate the motion of bodies in trajectories around
given centres, he can convince himself of the sub-
lime truths unfolded in that immortal work, and
must yield his assent to this position, that the moon
is deflected from the tangent of her orbit round the
earth by the same force by which the satellites of
Jupiter are deflected from the tangent of theirs,
the very same force which makes a stone unsup-
ported fall to the ground. The reader of the
“ Mecanique Celeste ■” if he be a still more learned
mathematician, and versed in the modern improve-
ments of the calculus which Newton discovered,
can follow the chain of demonstration by which
the wonderful provision made for the stability of
the universe is deduced from the fact that the direc-
tion of all the planetary motions is the same, the
eccentricity of their orbits small, and the angle
formed by the plane of their ecliptic acute. Satis-
fying himself of the laws which regulate the mu-
tual actions of those bodies, he can convince him-
self of a truth yet more sublime than Newton’s
discovery though flowing from it, and must yield
his assent to the marvellous position that all the
irregularities occasioned in the system of the uni-
verse, by the mutual attraction of its members, are
periodical, and subject to an eternal law which
prevents them from ever exceeding a stated amount,
and secures through all time the balanced structure
of a universe composed of bodies, whose mighty
bulk and prodigious swiftness of motion mock the
utmost eflorts of the human imagination. All these
truths are to the skilful mathematician as thoroughly
known, and their evidence is as clear as the simplest

218 FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

proposition in arithmetic is to common understand-
ings. But how few are there who thus know and
comprehend them ! Of all the millions that tho-
roughly believe those truths, certainly not a thou-
sand individuals are capable of following even any
considerable portion of the demonstrations upon
which they rest, and probably not a hundred now
living have ever gone through the whole steps of
those demonstrations. How different is the case of
the propositions discussed by Cuvier and his pre-
decessors ! How much more accessible are the
proofs on which their doctrines repose ! How vastly
more easy is a thorough acquaintance with the u Re-
citer ches” than with the “ Principia” and the
“ Mecanique Celeste ! ” How much more nume-
rous are they who have as good reason for fully
believing the propositions, because as great facility
of thoroughly examining the proofs, as first rate
mathematicians can have for assenting to Newton’s
third book, and La Place’s great theorem, or as com-
mon readers have for admitting any of the most
simple truths in the easiest of the sciences !

The extraordinary truths unfolded by the u Re-
cherches ” we have had an opportunity of stating
in detail. But it is necessary to revert to some of
the more general conclusions in their more imme-
diate connexion with the great subject of these vo-
lumes. The Illustration derived to theological
inquiry from the powers of inductive investigation
in this branch of science, and the Analogy found
between the two kinds of demonstration, was stated
in the Introductory Discourse ; but these form by
no means the whole contribution which this new
branch of knowledge furnishes to Natural Religion.
Before the nature and extent of that aid could be

CUVIER.

219

understood, it was necessary that the details of the
science itself should be considered, and its general
principles unfolded, together with the grounds upon
which they rest. We are now more particularly
to make the application.

To the geologist, as Cuvier has well observed,
the vast periods of time over which the phenomena
that form the subject matter of his inquiries have
extended, offer the same kind of obstruction as the
astronomer finds from the immense space over
which his researches stretch. The distance of time
is to the one as great a difficulty as that of space is
to the other in prosecuting his researches. Yet as
the properties of light, and its relation to media
artificial or natural, furnish a help to the senses
of the astronomer, so the endurable nature of the
principal portions that compose the framework of
animal bodies give invaluable assistance to the
labours of the geologist and anatomist, supplying
records which it is as physically impossible he
should have in any history of past changes on the
globe, as it is that the naked eye of the astronomi-
cal observer should penetrate into boundless space.
The most minute bones of small animals, even their
cartilaginous parts, and the most delicate shells of
sea or river fishes, are found in perfect preservation.
These shells are found, too, on ground now and for
ages lying high above the level of any waters, in
the middle of the hardest rocks, reaching the sum-
mits of lofty mountains, lying in vast layers of a
regular form and solid consistency, and which seem
to demonstrate the proposition that the sea in
former ages was spread over the regions where
those strata were formed, and lay there long and
quietly. The level parts of the earth, which to an

220

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

observer who only regards its surface seems always
to have been in its present state, can hardly be
jDenetrated in any place without showing that it has
undergone such revolutions and been under the sea
for ages ; while the bottom of the ocean has at
those remote periods been dry land. But when we
ascend to geater heights, we find the same proofs
of former changes ; marine remains often show
themselves on Alpine summits, but their kinds vary
much from those of the lower regions ; they are
exposed to view by the layers in which they lie im-
bedded being no longer horizontal and buried deep
under ground, but nearly vertical, broken in pieces,
and thrown variously about. These strata have for
the most part been of a formation long prior to
that of the horizontal ones, and were at one time
displaced, and elevated and rolled about ; the ocean
was the great agent in their formation as in that
of the strata which it afterwards deposited horizon-
tally around them ; the ocean, too, was the agent
which, after having first deposited, afterwards dis-
located and raised them into rocks, promontories,
and islands, amidst which the strata still found
horizontal were laid.

This ocean, at different times, not only held in
solution different dead matter, but was inhabited
by animals of kinds that exist no more. When it
last left the earth and retreated into its present po-
sition, the only one in which we have ever known
it by actual observation, its inhabitants nearly re-
sembled those which still live and swarm in its
waters. But at more remote periods, and when
forming its more ancient deposits, it was the recep-
tacle of animals of which not a living trace now
remains ; animals all whose species are extinct ;

CUVIER.

221

animals of genera absolutely different from any
now known, and which sometimes united together
in one individual frame, parts now only found se-
parate in distant and unconnected tribes.

Again, the intermixture of land animals and of
fish the inhabitants of fresh water only, with those
of marine origin, shows that several successive ir-
ruptions of the ocean must have taken place, and
that after it remained covering the land during
successive periods, it retreated successively, and
left that portion of the globe dry. Nor can there
be any doubt that large portions of the earth now
uncovered and inhabited by the human species and
other tribes of living animals had, before it was
last covered by the sea, been dry, and been inha-
bited by a race of animals of which their fossil re-
mains are all that we can now trace.

It is probable, too, that many of these mighty
revolutions have been sudden, and not effected by
gradual incroachments upon the earth, to destroy
its inhabitants. The examination of masses of flesh
belonging to some of the race destroyed by the last
change, and preserved by the frozen water in which
they were imbedded, seems to prove that the
death of the animals, and their envelopment in
water, the coagulation of the water, and the in-
troduction of a frozen climate, were simulta-
neous ; for the putrefactive process had not com-
menced till thousands of years after the destruction
of life, when, the ice being thawed, the exposure
to heat and air began the decomposition. But
the sudden violence by which these last changes
were effected is equally conspicuous in the trans-
port of huge blocks from one part of the country
to another in which they were manifestly strangers.

222

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

But we ascend to greater heights on the surface
of the globe, and we find the scene changed. We
are now upon the vast and lofty chains of solid
rock which traverse the central parts of the dif-
ferent continents, separate the rivers that water and
drain them, veil their summits in the clouds, and
are capped with never-melting snows. These are
the primitive mountains ; formed before any of the
other new-made strata whereof we have already
spoken, because they penetrate them vertically ;
and even these primeval rocks show by their crys-
tallisation, and occasionally by their stratified forms,
that they, too, wrere once in a liquid state, and de-
posited by waters which anciently held them in
solution and covered the places they now fill. In
these, as we ascend to the most ancient, no animal
remains at all are found. The shells and other
marine productions so abundant below, and in the
more recent layers of the globe, here cease alto-
gether to exist. The primeval rocks, therefore,
were first held in a liquid state, and afterwards de-
posited, by an ocean which contained in its bosom
no living thing ; an ocean which before covered,
or washed, a continent, or islands, on which life
never had existed.

There is also little doubt, according to Cuvier,
though we give not this as an incontestable proposi-
tion, that the prodigious changes which we have
been contemplating must have been operated by a
force wholly different from any that we now per-
ceive in action upon any portion of the globe. The
power employed to work some of the displacements
of which we see the traces is shown remarkably in
the insulated masses, found removed from great
distances, and lying still at vast heights. On the

CUVIER.

223

Jura, at near 4000 feet above the level of the sea,
are found blocks of granite evidently carried from
the Alps, one of which, containing 50,000 cubic
feet of stone, has been removed and placed in its
present position after the formation of the strata on
or among which it lies, — strata, the materials of
which do not fill its interstices, but have been rent
and broken by its fall. None of the operations
now observed on the earth’s surface satisfactorily
explain either this or the other revolutions in ques-
tion. The effects of weather, either in the fall of
rain, or in alternate freezing or thawing of water,
though sufficiently powerful and very beneficial
upon a small scale in decomposing stones and pul-
verising earths, are confined within comparatively
narrow limits. The action of rivers in wearing
down their banks, and changing the position of their
beds, is restricted to those banks and beds, and is of
slow and almost imperceptible operation, unless in
some cases of rare occurrence, where a mountain-
ous eminence being gradually undermined may fall
and dam up a river and cause a lake to be formed,
or where a lake may be let out of its reservoir by
the wearing away of some ridge forming its dam or
head, and so inundate the country below — events
barely possible be it observed, and of which the
period of authentic history records scarcely any in-
stance. Then the incroachments of the sea are
even more gradual than those of rivers ; nor can
any proof be found, in all the time over which au-
thentic human annals reach, of a material change
in position of the ocean with respect to its shores ;
the utmost it has ever done being to wear away an
isthmus here and there,* or cover a mile or two of
* There seems reason, from some ancient authorities, to

224

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

low and fiat coast.* The wonderful force of a
column of compressed water, in a vertical fissure
connected with a subterraneous sheet of it, however
shallow, but filling a broad space — the resistless
power of such a column to move about any super-
incumbent weight — has, perhaps, been too little
taken into account as an agent in effecting changes
on the earth’s surface. But these operations must
be all merely local. Volcanic action is still more
topical in its sphere ; and though violent enough
within these narrow limits, produces consequences
wholly confined to them, and unlike those which
are under consideration. Lastly, whatever effect
could be produced by the motion of the earth is of
incomparably a more slow and gradual kind than
any now’ enumerated. The motion of the poles
round the plane of the ecliptic, and the nutation
of the axis, are movements of this kind, and never
exceeded certain narrow limits. The rotation of
the earth has a regular and defined tendency to ac-
cumulate matter towards the equator, and flatten
our globe at the two poles, but no other ; and cer-
tainly neither a sudden nor a violent effect can be
operated by this means.

The result of the Researches upon the fossil
bones of land animals has demonstrated those
changes still more incontestably than the examina-
tion of the remains which have been left by the

believe that the Isle of Wight was once a peninsula when
the tide was out, to which tin, the staple of the ancient
British exportation, was carried in waggons at low water to
be shipped for Gaul.

* The estate of Earl Godwin in Kent, now covered by the
sea, is one of the principal examples of this kind of change ;
and there must clearly be great exaggeration in the accounts
given of it.

CUVIER.

225

inhabitants of the ocean ; both because, as they
must have lived on dry land, their being found in
strata deposited by water proves that water has
covered parts of the continent formerly dry, and
also because, their species being fewer in number
and better known, we can now certainly tell whe-
ther or not the fossil animal is the same with any
still living on the globe. Now of the one hundred
and fifty quadrupeds examined by Cuvier, and
whose remains are found deposited in different
strata of our continent, more than ninety are at
present wholly unknown in any part of the wrorld ;
nearly sixty of these are of genera wholly unknown,
the rest being new species of existing genera ; only
eleven or twelve are so like the present races as to
leave no doubt of their identity, or rather of their
osteology being the same ; while the remaining
fifty, though resembling in most respects the exist-
ing tribes, as far as the skeletons are concerned,
may very possibly be found, on more close survey,
and on examining more specimens, to differ mate-
rially even in their bones. Nor is it at all unlikely
that, of the whole one hundred and fifty, every one
would be found to be of a race now extinct, if we
could see their softer parts as well as their bones
and their teeth. But the relation which these
different species of ancient animals bear to the
different strata is still more remarkable and more
instructive in every point of view.

In the first place, it appears that oviparous
quadrupeds, as crocodiles and lizards, are found in
earlier strata than those containing viviparous ones,
as elephants and others. The earth which they
inhabited must, therefore, have existed and been
watered by rivers before the chalk formation, be-

226

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

cause they are found under the chalk in what is
termed the Jurassic formation. — But, secondly^
among the strata subsequent to the chalk forma-
tion, the unknown genera of animals, palseotheria,
anoplotheria, are only found in the series of beds
immediately over the chalk. A very few species
of known genera of viviparous quadrupeds are
found with them, and also some fresh- water fishes.
— Thirdly . Certain extinct species of known ge-
nera, as elephants, rhinoceros, are not found with
those more ancient animals of extinct genera. They
are chiefly found in alluvial earth, and in the most
recent tertiary strata, and all that we find with these
extinct species are either unknown, or of more than
doubtful identity with any now existing. Again,
those remains which appear identical with the
known species are found in recent alluvial earths,
and places which seem to belong to the present
world. — Fourthly . We have seen that the most
ancient secondary strata contain reptiles and no
other quadrupeds. None of the rocks at all con-
tain any human remains ; nor were any remains of
the monkey tribe, or any of the family of quadru-
manes found in Cuvier’s time, if indeed they are
observable even now. In turf-bogs, in rents and
cavities, under ruins as well as in cemeteries, human
skeletons are from time to time found ; but not a
vestige of them or of any human bone in any of
the regular strata, or of the fissure deposits, or of
the caves and caverns which abound with all the
other animal remains. Whatever human bones
have been found, were undoubtedly placed there by
human agency in recent times.

For Cuvier has examined with the utmost care
all the instances which were pretended to afford

CUVIER,.

227

proofs of human remains. Pie closely investi-
gated several thousands of the bones in the Paris
basin, and in the deposits of Provence, Nice, and
others. All which had ever been supposed to be
human he found to be either animal bones, or bones
of men accidentally placed among the others, or in
some other manner satisfactorily accounted for.
The skeleton supposed by Scheutzer to be a man’s,
and which he made the subject of his book “ Ho-
mo Diiuvii Testis ,” a century ago, has been already
adverted to. Cuvier undertook the complete exa-
mination of it. The first skeleton which formed
the subject of Scheutzer’s argument was found
near Amiens. Thirty years afterwards another was
discovered, but its possessor, Gesner himself, raised
grave suspicions that it was some lower animal’s
remains. A more complete one than either was
afterwards found. Cuvier has engraved this, to-
gether with Scheutzer’s copied from his own book
— and how any person could, upon the bare inspec-
tion, ever have conceived that either was a human
skeleton is truly incomprehensible. But Cuvier has
further engraved a land salamander, whose osteo-
logy he had, after his admirable manner, thoroughly
examined, and its likeness to the fossil remains
shows it to be of the same genus, though of a
wholly new species, above six times larger. He
enters at large into the details of the difference be-
tween these remains and the human skeleton. But
a further demonstration of their nature was reserved
for him when, in 1811, at Leyden, he had access to
the actual fossil itself of Scheutzer, and was per-
mitted to remove a portion of the incrusting stone.
He did this with the salamander by him, and pre-
dicted the kind of bones that would be discovered

228

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

by the operation. The success of the experiment
was complete ; and to show the difference between
this skeleton and a human subject, Cuvier had the
satisfaction of also discovering a double row of
small and sharp teeth, studding the fringe or bor-
der of the large circular mouth. In 1818, he had
an opportunity of repeating this examination upon
the last found specimen, which is now in the Bri-
tish Museum, and with exactly the same result. It
is therefore demonstrated, as clearly as any fact in
the whole compass of physical science, that these
bones belong to a race wholly different from the
human species, and indeed from any species now
existing on the face of the globe. Finally, places
where human bones have for many centuries been
deposited with the remains of animals, as the
ground under ancient fields of battle, have been
examined, and it is found that the one are quite as
well preserved as the other, and have not suffered
more decay. The importance of establishing the
conclusion that no human remains are to be found
in the strata of the earth will presently appear, and
is the reason why we have dwelt upon the evidence
in some detail.

If we next inquire at what period the last great
change took place, although of course no records
can remain to fix it, yet we have some data on
which to determine the limits of the question. The
progress of attrition in the larger rivers, as the
Dnieper and the Nile, and also the formation of
downs where they approach from the sea, has been
observed, as on the coast of the Atlantic in the south
of France; and the results indicate no very remote
antiquity as the age of the present terraqueous dis-
tribution ; certainly not more than 5000 or 6000

CUVIER.

229

years. Of these, history only goes back about
3000. Homer lived but 2800 years ago. Genesis
cannot have been written earlier than 3300 years
back. Even the earliest Chinese monuments that
are authentic reach but 2255 years. The astro-
nomical remains of the East, when closely exa-
mined, especially the Zodiac, prove nothing of that
extreme antiquity which was at one time ascribed
to them. Nor do the mines, such as those of
Elba, from which similar inferences were formerly
deduced, show, since their more accurate exa-
mination, anything of the kind. Indeed none of
the conclusions they lead to can be regarded as
at all of a certain kind. The general result of the
Inquiry, then, is, that at a period not more remote
than 5000 or 6000 years ago, a mighty convulsion
covered with the ocean all those parts of the globe
then inhabited by man and the other animals his
contemporaries, and left dry those other portions
of the earth which we now inhabit. The few re-
mains of the races then destroyed have served to
people this new world ; it is only since this period
began that we have entered upon the progressive
state of improvement in which our race has ad-
vanced ; and to this period whatever historical
monuments we possess of the globe or its inha-
bitants are confined. But it is equally clear that
this inhabited earth, then left dry for the last
time, had previously undergone several revolutions,
and had been alternately dry land and covered with
the ocean, more than once, or even twice, before
this last revolution. We have access more parti-
cularly to examine the condition and population of
the earth when it was last inhabited, that is, when
the sea left it the last time but one. We are now

L

230

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

living in the fourth era or succession of inhabitants
upon this earth. The first was that of reptiles ;
the second that of palaeotheria ; the third of mam-
moths and megatheria; and it is only in this pre-
sent or fourth sera in succession that we find our
own species and the animals which have always
been our companions.

We are entitled then to affirm that, with respect
to animal life, three propositions are proved, all of
great curiosity, and still more, when taken either
separately or together, all leading to conclusions
of the highest importance —

First — that there were no animals of any kind
in the ocean which deposited the primary strata,
nor any on the continent which that ocean had left
dry upon its retreat ;

Secondly — that the present race of animals did
not exist in the earlier successive stages and revo-
lutions through which the globe has passed ;

Thirdly — that our own species did not exist in
those earlier stages either.

Now the conclusion to which these propositions
leads, and which indeed follows from any one of
them taken singly, but still more remarkably from
the whole, and most especially from the last, is
that a creative power must have interposed to alter
the order of things in those early times. That
an interposition of this kind took place, the last
and most important, about 6000 years ago, is highly
probable from the physical and natural evidence
alone which is before us, and to which alone in
this work reference can be made. But the date
is not material. If at an uncertain period before
the present condition of the earth and of its in-
habitants, there were neither men nor the present

CUVIER.

231

race of creatures, wild and domestic, which people
the globe, then it follows that between that period,
whensoever it was, and the earliest to which the
history of the world reaches back, an interposition
of power took place to create those animals, and man
among the rest. The atheistical argument, that the
present state of things may have lasted for ever, is
therefore now at an end. It can no longer be affirmed
that all the living tribes have gone on from eternity
continuing their species ; and that while one gene-
ration of these passed away and another came up
in endless and uninterrupted succession, the earth
abided for ever. An interruption and a beginning
of that succession has been proved. The earth has
been shown not to have for ever abode in its pre-
sent state ; and its inhabitants are demonstrated,
by the incontrovertible evidence of facts, to have at
one time had no existence. Scepticism therefore
can now only be allowed as to the time and manner
of the creative interposition ; and on these the facts
shed no light whatever. But that an act of creation
was performed at one precise time is demonstrated
as clearly as any proposition in natural philosophy,
and demonstrated by the same evidence, the in-
duction of facts, upon which all the other branches
of natural philosophy rest.

It is wholly in vain to argue that the sea or the
earth, or the animals formerly existing and now
extinct, or any other created beings, or any of the
powers of nature, as we know it, or as it has ever
been known, could have made the change. It is
difficult enough to conceive how these known forces
could ever have destroyed the earth’s former inha-
bitants. But suppose the approach of some comet
or other body at different times produced the vast

E 2

232

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

tides by which the land was successively swept, this
will not account for new species and new genera of
living creatures having sprung up both to inhabit
the land and to people the waters. An act of crea-
tion— that which would now be admitted as a direct
interposition of a superior intelligence and power —
must have taken place. This is the sublime con-
clusion to which these Researches lead, conducted
according to the most rigorous rules of inductive
philosophy, precluding all possibility of cavil, acces-
sible to every one who will give himself the trouble
of examining the steps of the reasoning upon which
they repose, and removing doubt from the mind in
proportion as their apprehension removes ignorance.
It is an invaluable addition to the science of Natural
Theology, and forms a chapter as new in kind as
any of the new animal species are in Natural
History.

Such are the benefits conferred upon the great
and fundamental argument of Divine Intelligence
and contrivance by the recent discoveries in Fossil
Osteology. The evidence of design in the combina-
tion and mutual adaptation of the parts of extinct
animals we pass over as only a multiplication of
proofs sufficiently numerous before. But the other
branch of Natural Theology, that which investigates
the Divine Benevolence, also derives aid from this
new quarter. We now refer to the argument main-
tained in the Dissertation upon the Origin of Evil,
and also to the theories which were there very
respectfully considered, and diffidently and reluct-
antly found to be unsatisfactory. The late inter-
esting discoveries have thrown new light upon
both these subjects of discussion, and the authors
of some of the systems which we examined may

CUVIER.

23a

appear to the improved state of our knowledge re-
specting the Chain of Being, as we certainly do
make our appeal to it upon what appears to be a
more solid ground of argumentation.

The doctrine respecting the Chain of Being is
admitted to be incomplete as regards the matter of
fact, inasmuch as we find many and large blanks
in the series of animated creatures known upon our
globe. Whatever other objections, therefore, were
competent against this theory, an additional one
was, that little appearance of a Chain of Being
seems discernible in the universe. Now, the sup-
porters of this doctrine have certainly a right to
maintain that the blanks are filled up in a very
remarkable manner by the recent discoveries. For
the new species of animals discovered to have existed
in former states of the globe, unquestionably fill up
some of the most remarkable chasms in our series
of living animals. Thus the chief blank was always
observed in the pachydermatous animals, the fewest
in number, the least approaching one another, and
the whole tribe the most removed from others.
Now most of the new and extinct kinds of quadru-
peds belong to this class, and we have had occasion
to observe how links are supplied between race and
race hitherto appearing altogether distinct.

But although we may not be justified in reposing
great confidence in the argument drawn from the
plan of a Chain of Being as applied to the subject of
positive evil, there is another point of view in which
the subject may, with perfect safety, be considered.
As far as regards mere defect, mere imperfection,
it is most important to consider whether the plan of
Divine Providence may not have been to create a
succession of beings rising one above another in

234

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

attributes ; say merely of intelligent beings thus
differing in their approaches to perfection. The
importance of this consideration cannot fail to strike
the observer when he reflects that there is no possi-
bility of separating one of the greatest of all positive
evils, death itself, from mere defect or imperfection,
as was observed in the Dissertation already referred
to ; not to mention many other kinds of evils arising
from mere imperfection, — as all that proceed from
weakness, from ignorance, from defect of mental
energy, as well as mental perspicacity. All these
evils, and all their various consequences, originate
in mere defect or imperfection. Therefore it is of
no little moment in this important argument that
we should be able to derive any new light to guide
our steps upon that part of the ground which be-
longs to defect or imperfection.

Now the late discoveries certainly afford us
some such lights. They show as plainly as the
evidence of facts can show anything, that there was
a time when this globe existed with animals to
people it, but without any beings at all of the
human kind. The sounder opinion certainly is,
that there has been a succession of stages through
which the earth has passed, with different races of
animals belonging to each period ; that in the ear-
liest age of all no animal life existed ; that this
was succeeded by another in which reptiles were
found to flourish, and that subsequent periods were
marked by other successive races of animated
beings. But as this is the subject of controversy,
wre shall only say that there have been two eras,
one in which inferior animals only existed without
man, and the other in which we now live, and in
which our species are the principal inhabitants of

CUYIEIl.

235

the globe. This is admitted by all who have con-
sidered the evidence ; and they who the most strenu-
ously deny the other doctrines of Fossil Osteology
avow their implicit belief in the great proposition,
that the relics of an age are clearly discovered in
which man had no existence.

Now this position is most important with a view
to our present argument. It appears that there
was a time when the Creator had not brought into
existence any being above the rank of the lower
animals. It follows that the divine wisdom had
not then thought fit to create any animal endowed
with the intelligence and capacity and other mental
qualities of the human species. If an observer had
been placed in that world, and been called upon to
reason regarding it, what would have been his re-
flections on the imperfections of animated nature ?
Yet, after a lapse of some ages, those defects are
all supplied, and a more accomplished animal is
called into existence. The faculties of that animal,
and his destinies, his endowments and his defici-
encies, his enjoyments and his sufferings, are now
the subjects of the observer’s contemplation and of
his reasoning. What ground has he now' for affirm-
ing that a more perfect creature may not hereafter
be brought into existence — a creature more highly
endowed and suffering far less from the evils of
imperfection under which our race now suffers so
much ? No one can tell but that as many of the
former inhabitants of the globe are now extinct —
tribes which existed before the human race was
created — so this human race itself may hereafter
be, like them, only known by its fossil remains ;
and other tribes found upon other continents, tribes
as far excelling ours in power and in wisdom as we

236

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

excel the mastodon and the megatherium of the
ancient world.

It is to be further observed that no uncreated
being can, by the nature of the thing, have any
right to complain of not being brought into exist-
ence earlier. The human race cannot complain
of having come so late into the world ; nor can
any of the tribes created before us complain that
they were less perfect than a species, the human,
which did not then exist. Have we, then, the in-
habitants of the present world, any better reason to
complain that the new, as yet unknown, possible
creatures of a future period of the universe have
not as yet come into existence ? It must be con-
fessed that the extraordinary fact, now made clearly
and indisputably* known to us, of a world having
existed in which there were abundance of inferior
creatures, and none of our own race, gives us every
ground for believing it possible that Divine Provi-
dence may hereafter supply our place on the globe
with another race of beings as far superior to our-
selves as we are to them which have gone before us.
But how inconceivably does this consideration
strengthen and extend the supposition broached in
the Dissertation upon Evil ! How strikingly does
it prescribe to us a wise and wholesome distrust of
the conclusions towards which human impatience
is so prone to rush in the darkness of human igno-
rance ! How loudly does it call upon us to follow
the old homely maxim, “ When you are in the
dark, and feel uncertain which way to move, stand
still !” How forcibly does it teach us that much —

* The kind of controversy which may he raised, hut never
has been raised on this point, is discussed in the next dis-
sertation.

CUVIER.

237

iiay, that all which now we see as in a glass darkly,
and therefore in distorted form and of discoloured
hue, may, when viewed in the broad and clear light
of day, fall into full proportion and shine in har-
monious tints !*

* Dr. Paley, in his twenty-fifth chapter, assumes, that
whenever a new country has been discovered, with new
plants and animals, these are always found in company with
plants and animals which are already known, and possessing
the same general qualities. From hence he derives an argu-
ment for the unity of the First Cause. Mr. Dugald Stewart
also infers from the supposed identity of animal instincts in
all ages, that the laws of physical nature must have always
been the same, otherwise these animals could not have con-
tinued to exist.

Now, first as to Dr. Paley’s assumption. It certainly
appears too large, even as regards the existing species and
the present state of the globe ; for there seem to be some
places where all the animals are peculiar. But be that as
it may, the fact assumed is by no means necessary for the
support of Dr. Paley’s conclusion in favour of the Divine
Unity. It is extremely probable that in some former stages
of our globe there were no animals whatever of the same
tribes with those which to us are familiarly known. Yet
can there be any doubt that in their structure the same de-
gree of skill is observable as far as their only remains enable
us to judge, and can we hesitate to believe, that were there
other parts before us, we should in those find as much artist-
like contrivance as in the existing races of animals ? In-
deed we may go further and assert, that there is every
ground for supposing that the same kind, as well as an equal
measure of skill, is to be traced in the lost as in the existing
tribes, and that, consequently, the characteristic argument
will equally apply here. The proof of this in the structure
of the alimentary canal, which Cuvier was not acquainted
with, will presently be considered.

Secondly. With respect to the observation upon instinct,
unquestionably some doubt may be raised by the new dis-
coveries ; for we cannot feel any confidence in the assertion
that the animals, whose skeletons alone remain, were en-
dowed with instincts similar to those now in being, more

L 3

238

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

especially the tribes of anomalous description, such as the
pterodactyl us and ichthyosaurus. We have never seen in
life any animals combining the various forms which seem
to have met in these extraordinary creatures. We cannot,
therefore, feel entire confidence in the belief that their habits
or instincts resembled those of any combination of animals
so dissimilar, — still less can we comprehend a harmonious
union of the instincts proper to birds with those peculiar to
reptiles, which yet the pterodactyl i seem formed to obey.
Dark, however, as is this department of the subject, we have
abundant ground, from the preponderating weight of analogy,
for resting satisfied that ail their instincts, whatever they
may have been, were nicely adjusted to their bodily powders,
and that both their bodies and their instincts were as nicely
adapted to the laws of matter and of motion.

It would be improper not to mention at the close of this
Analytical View, that the science of Palaeontology was much
indebted to some able and learned men who were contempo-
raries of Cuvier. The examination of the Paris Basin, as
regards its mineral character, was almost wholly the work
of Brongnart, and it is allowed to be a model in that kind.
Cuvier’s brother, also, ably assisted him in the botanical
department. The labours of Lamarck in conchology are
so universally known as to need no further mention ; and
among other names may be stated that of Miller of Bristol*
as having made valuable contributions to these inquiries.

( 239 )

LABOURS OF CUVIER’S SUCCESSORS.

Many learned men were attracted by the dis-
coveries of Cuvier, and devoted themselves to
the cultivation of the same science. During the last
twelve or fifteen years of his life they had joined
in similar pursuits, and many of his opinions were
modified, and many of his researches were materi-
ally aided, by their diligent and successful inquiries.
As far as regards the general connexion between
Organic Remains and Geology, indeed another in-
quirer had appeared in the field as early as himself,
the laborious, modest, and sagacious William Smith,
a civil engineer, who, unassisted and almost un-
known, had been prosecuting his researches into
the mineral state of England, and performed cer-
tainly the most extraordinary work that any single
and private individual ever accomplished — the de-
lineation of the strata of the whole country, in a
set of underground maps, which he published in
1815, and followed afterwards with a work upon
the relation between these strata and their Organic
Remains. Although the results of his investiga-
tions were published thus late, he had many years
before communicated the greater part of them freely
to his private friends. It must be confessed that
few men of greater merit, or more unassuming,

240

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

have ever adorned any walk of science, and few
have ever made a more important step in assisting
the progress of discovery.

The other able persons who have cultivated this
branch of science are certainly endowed with
greater learning, that is, book learning, than Mr.
Smith could boast of, beside attending closely to
actual observation in the field. Some of them, too,
may fairly claim a high place as men of profound
and original views. Where so many excel and
prefer claims so undeniable to the gratitude of the
world, it is invidious as well as difficult to make a
selection, the rather as, happily, we still have the
great benefit of their continued assistance. In
Italy, Brocchi ; in Switzerland, Studer, Hugi,
Charpentier, and Agassiz, the able and zealous dis-
ciple to whom Cuvier gave up the department of
fossil ichthyology, when composing his work on
Comparative Anatomy; in Germany, Yon Buch,
Kaup, Count Munster, Goldfuss, Bosenmuller,
Wagner, and the justly celebrated Humboldt ; in
Russia, Fischer ; in Belgium, Burtin, Omalius,
Dumont ; in France, Beaumont, Brongnart, Blain-
ville, Prevost, Boue, Brochant, Geoffroy ; and in
England, Conybeare, Mantell, Lyell as incident to
his Geological Treatise, Clift, Delabeche, Konig,
Flibbert, Broderip, Fitton, Bakewell, Greenough,
Owen, Murchison, Professor Sedgewick, and Dr.
Buckland. These, it is believed, are all, except
Brocchi, fortunately still alive, and still actively
engaged in the same interesting inquiries, though
some of them rather confine their study to the geo-
logical portion of the subject. If from the brilli-
ant assemblage the names of Sedgewick and Buck-
land were selected, but, as regarding Fossil Oste-

cuvier’s successors.

241

ology, the latter especially, private friendship could
hardly be charged with officiously assuming to be
the organ of the general voice — but, indeed, to re-
cord such merit might well seem presumptuous^
where the panegyric is far less likely to reach after-
times than the subject of its praise.

The labours of Cuvier’s successors, as far as re-
gards his doctrines, belong to one or other of three
classes : to the progress which they have made in
examining the fossil remains of former worlds, or
conditions of our globe ; * to the arguments which
they have advanced in opposition to or in support
of his theory respecting the relation that subsists
between those animal remains and the strata in
which they are found ; and to the arguments ad-
duced for or against his opinions respecting the
formation and age of those strata. It may be
proper to mention the things done under each of
these heads, although the last is of comparatively
little importance to the purpose of the present
work, and the second is of considerably less mo-
ment, as regards Cuvier’s proper subject, than the
first.

I. Among the extinct mammalia of the pachy-
dermatous order, we mentioned one which Cuvier
referred to the tapir genus, but pronounced to have
been of a gigantic size. He only had seen the jaw
teeth of the animal. But since his time other im-
portant parts have been found, chiefly at Epples-
heim, in Hesse Darmstadt : and a genus Dinotlie-
rium (having four species) has been established, of
which this species is termed giganteum , his length
having been apparently not less than eighteen or

* The notes to the Analysis of Cuvier contain statements
of the numbers of new species discovered since his time.

242

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGY.

nineteen feet. His distinguishing peculiarity is the
hav ing two enormous tusks, which are bent down-
wards like those of the walrus, but are placed at
the front end of the lower jaw, so as to bend below
the chin. Dr. Buckland has shown by most cogent
arguments that he must have lived chiefly in the
water, and these tusks in all probability were
used in supporting him, anchored as it were, to the
side of the river or lake while his huge body floated,
as well as employed in digging for the roots upon
which his teeth show that he fed.

Notwithstanding somewhat scanty materials,
Cuvier had described and, as it were, restored the
megatherium with extraordinary skill. But a fur-
ther importation of bones from South America has
enabled observers in this country to throw some
additional light upon the structure and habits of this
singular animal. These bones were found in the bed
of the river Salad os in Buenos Ayres, a succession
of very dry seasons having brought the water un-
usually low. Mr. Clift, of the Surgeons’ Museum,
a most learned and skilful comparative anatomist,
and pupil and assistant of John Hunter, examined
them fully, and found many very singular particulars
not before known respecting this animal. Among
other things it appears to have a bony partition be-
tween its nostrils (septum narium) like the rhinoceros
tichorhinus. The structure of its teeth indicates
that they are formed by perpetual growth like the
elephant’s tusks, and not like his teeth by renewal.
The enormous size of the tail never could have
been conjectured from the analogy of the elephant
and other pachydermatous animals. It was com-
posed of vertebrae, of which the one at the root had
a diameter of seven inches, and the diameter from

CUVIElt’s SUCCESSORS.

243

the extremities of the processes was no less than
twenty-one inches. If then allowance be made for
the muscle and integuments, it could not have been
less than two feet in diameter at the root, and six
feet in 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 fore feet were a yard long, and the bones of
the fore legs were so constructed thqt 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 it 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
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 Aiming (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
bf 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 liad been made before the last edition of
Cuvier’s book, and is mentioned, though shortly, in the Ana-
lysis.

cuvieb’s successors.

245

found in the Hag 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, fiat 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-
riurn ; 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
where 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 Ira wadi. 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 Latidens. 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.

CUVlJEIi’s SUCCESSORS.

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, j

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 lias
ever marked the great men of our eastern settle-
ments. Dr. Falconer and Captain Cautley have
chiefly signalized themselves in this worthy phrsuit ;
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
Sivatherium, 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.

fib.

248

FOSSIL OSTEOLOGF.

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 Camel idee, 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 position 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 ; but the
particulars are unknown to me.

Cuvier’s successors.

249

Besides all tliese 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

* Konpos, fasces • A iQos, 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 'vyere 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 arid then somewhat hardened. Dr.
Kaup has termed the large unknown animal Chiro-
therium ,j* 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 Xe/p, hand.

cuvier’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 ducks 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 faecal 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 piocess 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 Pegis 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

* KooAov, the great intestine.

M

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 Placoideans ,*
whose scales are irregular enamel plates more fre-
quently broad, but varying in dimensions down to
a point or prickle ; the Ganoldeans, j* 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.

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,

* n a tablet or plate, f r<zvo$, brilliancy.

J K r us, a comb. § Perch belong to this class.

|| K vkXo;, a circle. Salmon and herring are of this class

cuvier’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
I the earlier times of the secondary and transition
I 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,

I and finds not a single exception to the rule thus
1 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
j 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
i of those whose species are found in the Jurassic
deposits is now known among existing fishes ; nor
j 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 the
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 sauroi'd 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
I 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
j some other instances the plates forming the gills
or branchise 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, inconsequence 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, t-hat 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 ?|

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.

cuyier’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 Cuyier’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
for 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 3 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 the 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 earth
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 IIol-

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 ,f or more recent ;
the next before miocene ,t 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 that
of Catastrophes. B. xviii. c. 8.

f ITXs/wv, more, and K aivos, recent.

t M ueov, less. || H oos, 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 of
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 hyeenas 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.

FOSSIL 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 Kimmeridge 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, u Fasciculus Florum Geometri-
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.

THE END.

London Printed by W. Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street.