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Show f''-• ''\.o • ' 170 DARWINIAN A. Another unanswerable question asked by the Boston reviewers is, Why, when structuTe and instinct or habit vary-as they must have varied, on Darwin's hypothesis-they vary together and harmoniously, instead of vaguely~ We cannot tell, because we cannot tell why either varies at all. Yet, as they both do vary in successive generations-as is seen under domestication-and are correlated, we can only adduce the fact . . Darwin may be precluded from our answer, hut we may say that they vary together because designed to do- so. A reviewer says that the chance of their varying together is inconceivably small; yet, if they do not, the variant individuals must all perish. Then it is well that it is not left to chance. To refer to a parallel case: before we were born, nourishment and the equivalent to respiration took place in a certain way. But the moment we were ushered into this breathing world, our actions promptly conformed, both as to respiration and nourishment, to the before unused structure and to the new sur-roundings. "Now," says the Examiner," suppose, for instance, the gills of an aquatic animal converted into lungs, while instinct still compelled a continuance under water' would not drowning ensue~ " No doubt. Bu. t -simply contemplating the facts, instead of theon~- ing-we . notice that young frogs do not keep then· heads under water after ceasing to be tadpoles. The instinct promptly changes with the structure, without supernatural interposition:;:-just as Darwin would have it, if the development· of a variety or incipient ; . . DARWIN AND HIS REVIEWERS. 171 species, though rare, were as natural as a metamorphosis. "Or if a quadruped, not yet furnished with wings, were suddenly inspired with the instinct of a bird and precipitated itself from a cliff, would not the de-' scent be hazardously rapid?" Doubtless the animal would be no better supported than the objection. But Darwin makes very little indeed of voluntary efforts as a cause of change, and even poor Lamarck need not be caricatured. He never supposed that an elephant would take such a notion in to his wise head or that a squirrel would begin with other than short' and easy leaps; yet might not the length of the leap be increased by practice ? The North American reviewer's position, that the higher brute animals have comparatively little instinct and no intelligence, is a heavy blow and great discouragement to dogs, horses, elephants, and monkeys. Thus stripped of their all, and left to shift for themselves as they may in this hard world, their pursuit and seeming attainment of knowledge under such peculiar difficulties are interesting to <fontemplate. However, we are not so sure as is the critic that instinct regularly increases downward and decreases upward in the scale of being. Now that the case of the bee is reduced to moderate proportions, 1 we know of nothing in instinct surpassing that of an animal so h~gh as a bird, the talegal, the male of which plumes himself upon making a hot-bed in which to hatch his partner's eggs-which he tends and regulates the heat 1 Vide article by Mr. C. Wright, in the Jfatl~ematical Monthly for May last. · |
