Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon].

  • Robert Chambers
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    others, and the construction of nests for a coming progeny by birds. This quality is nothing more than a mode of operation peculiar to the faculties in a humble state of endowment, or early stage of development. The cell formation of the bee, the house - building of ants and beavers, the web- spinning of spiders, are but primitive exercises of constructiveness, the faculty which, indefinite with us, leads to the arts of the weaver, upholsterer, architect, and mechanist, and makes us often work delightedly where our labours are in vain, or nearly so. ‘The storing of provisions by the ants is an exercise of acquisitiveness,—the faculty which with us makes rich men and misers. A vast number of curious devices, by which insects pro- vide for the protection and subsistence of their young, whom they are perhaps never to see, are most probably a peculiar restricted effort of philo- progenitiveness. The common source of this class of acts, and of common mental operations, is shewn very convincingly by the melting of the one set into the other. Thus, for example, the bee and bird will make modifications in the ordinary form of their cells and nests when necessity compels them. Thus, the alimentiveness of such animals as the dog, usually definite with regard to quantity
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