VI.

OF INSTINCT.

Haud equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis
Ingenium, aut rerum fato prudentia major.--Virg. Georg. L. I. 415.

I. _Instinctive actions defined. Of connate passions._ II. _Of the
sensations and motions of the foetus in the womb._ III. _Some animals
are more perfectly formed than others before nativity. Of learning to
walk._ IV. _Of the swallowing, breathing, sucking, pecking, and lapping
of young animals._ V. _Of the sense of smell, and its uses to animals.
Why cats do not eat their kittens._ VI. _Of the accuracy of sight in
mankind, and their sense of beauty. Of the sense of touch in elephants,
monkies, beavers, men._ VII. _Of natural language._ VIII. _The origin
of natural language;_ 1. _the language of fear;_ 2. _of grief;_ 3. _of
tender pleasure;_ 4. _of serene pleasure;_ 5. _of anger;_ 6. _of
attention._ IX. _Artificial language of turkies, hens, ducklings,
wagtails, cuckoos, rabbits, dogs, and nightingales._ X. _Of music; of
tooth-edge; of a good ear; of architecture._ XI. _Of acquired
knowledge; of foxes, rooks, fieldfares, lapwings, dogs, cats, horses,
crows, and pelicans._ XII. _Of birds of passage, dormice, snakes, bats,
swallows, quails, ringdoves, stare, chaffinch, hoopoe, chatterer,
hawfinch, crossbill, rails and cranes._ XIII. _Of birds nests; of the
cuckoo; of swallows nests; of the taylor bird._ XIV. _Of the old
soldier; of haddocks, cods, and dog fish; of the remora; of crabs,
herrings, and salmon._ XV. _Of spiders, caterpillars, ants, and the
ichneumon._ XVI. 1. _Of locusts, gnats;_ 2. _bees;_ 3. _dormice, flies,
worms, ants, and wasps._ XVII. _Of the faculty that distinguishes man
from the brutes._

I. All those internal motions of animal bodies, which contribute to digest
their aliment, produce their secretions, repair their injuries, or increase
their growth, are performed without our attention or consciousness. They
exist as well in our sleep, as in our waking hours, as well in the foetus
during the time of gestation, as in the infant after nativity, and proceed
with equal regularity in the vegetable as in the animal system. These
motions have been shewn in a former part of this work to depend on the
irritations of peculiar fluids, and as they have never been classed amongst
the instinctive actions of animals, are precluded from our present
disquisition.

But all those actions of