Habit and instinct / by C. Lloyd Morgan.

  • C. Lloyd Morgan
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Habit and instinct / by C. Lloyd Morgan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/402 page 13
    Many of these activities are so familiar to the obser- vant naturalist, constituting as they do the normal life- habits of the animals which exhibit them, that they are apt to suffer the common fate of the familiar, and receive less notice and less attention than the unusual and unfamiliar. That an insect should exhibit one set of activities as a larva or caterpillar, and a totally different set of activities as an imago or perfect insect, seems quite natural, and what we should expect. But the naturalist, who is some- thing more than a collector, sees in these activities problems not less difficult of solution than are the problems of structure with which they are associated. And, in any consideration of instinct, these familiar activities which are performed under the ordinary circumstances of normal life must not be allowed to fall into the background. They form the largest, if not the most conspicuous, group of instinctive activities. But there are other instinctive activities which are performed seldom or only once, and these are in all cases of vital importance to the continuance of the race. Of the many drones which follow the queen-bee in her nuptial flight, one only is successful in mating with her, and that but once in his life. And yet, were the sexual instinct of drones to lapse, even for a single year, the race would be decimated; and were it to lapse altogether for but a few years, the race would become extinct. The instinct is essential to the preservation and continuance of the race. And many of these instinctive activities thus but seldom performed are adaptive with a nicety which is a continual source of our wonder and admiration. Of such exquisite adaptation we may take, for example, the instinctive activities * of the Yucca moth (Pronuba yuccasella). * Described in Kerner’s “Natural History of Plants,” translated and edited by Prof. Oliver, vol. ii. p. 156.
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