On instinct / [Philip Bury Duncan].

  • Philip Bury Duncan
Date:
1820?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On instinct / [Philip Bury Duncan]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/34 page 17
    be collected from the classes of various kinds of the lower animals ; but I will now proceed to de¬ tail some of their acts which seem to arise from the faculty of reason, which; if you take Dr. John¬ son’s definition of it; “the deduction of one pro- “ position from another; or the inference of conse- “ quences from premises,” or Locke’s, “the power “ of drawing an inference from a comparison of “ ideas,” must lead one to conclude that they are not devoid of this intellectual power. Mr. Spence remarks, “ we cannot reasonably “ suppose insects to be gifted with instincts adapt- “ ed for occasions that are never likely to happen. “ If therefore we find them in these extraordinary “ and improbable emergences still availing them- “ selves of the means apparently best calculated “ for ensuring their objects ; and if in addition “ they seem in some cases to gain knowledge by “ experience, if they can communicate information “ to each other, and if they are endowed with me- “ mory, it appears impossible to deny that they are “ possessed of reason.” In proof of these positions he produces the following facts. Professor Fischer has published an account of a hen, (which he has figured, and which he states to have had an outline of countenance so like an old woman, that an Hindoo might have supposed it was a transmigrated hen-wife,) which hen made use of the artificial heat of a hotbed to hatch her eggs. He next quotes a fact stated by Reaumur, of some ants, which, finding they could derive heat from a bee-hive, contrived to avail themselves of it B
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