Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/230

218 of animal instincts. These instincts must originally have been of an intelligent nature; but the actions which they prompted, having through successive generations been frequently repeated, became at last organized into a purely mechanical reflex, and therefore now appear as actions which we call purely automatic or blindly instinctive. Thus, for instance, the scratching of graminivorous birds in earth and stones was no doubt originally an intelligent action, performed with the conscious purpose of uncovering seeds; but by frequent repetition through successive generations the action has now become blindly instinctive. This is shown by the following experiment: Dr. Allen Thomson tells me that he hatched out some chickens on a carpet, where he kept them for several days. They showed no inclination to scratch, because the stimulus supplied by the carpet to the soles of their feet was of too novel a character to call into action the hereditary instinct; but when Dr. Thomson sprinkled a little gravel on the carpet, and so supplied the appropriate or customary stimulus, the chickens immediately began their scratching movements. Yet, for aught that these chickens can have known to the contrary, there was as good a chance of finding seeds in the carpet as in the thin layer of gravel. And numberless other cases might be given to prove that animals acquire instincts by frequently repeating intelligent actions, just as we ourselves acquire, even in our individual lifetime, an instinct to adjust our nightcaps—an instinct which may become so pronounced as to assert itself even when a man is in the profound unconsciousness of apoplectic coma.

Thus we are able to explain all the more complicated among animal instincts as cases of "lapsed intelligence." But, on the other hand, a great many of the more simple instincts were probably evolved in a more simple way. That is to say, they have probably never been of an intelligent character, but have begun as merely accidental adjustments of the organism to its surroundings, and have then been laid hold upon by natural selection and developed into automatic reflexes. Take, for instance, the action of so-called "shamming dead," which is performed by certain insects and allied animals when in the presence of danger. That this is not a case of intelligent action we may feel quite sure, not only because it would be absurd to suppose that insects could have any such highly-abstract ideas as those of death and its conscious simulation, but also because Mr. Darwin tells me that he once made a number of observations on this subject, and in no case did he find that the attitude in which the animal shammed dead resembled that in which the animal really died. All, therefore, that "shamming dead" amounts to is an instinct to remain motionless, and therefore inconspicuous, in the presence of enemies; and it is easy to see that this instinct may have been developed by natural selection without ever having been of an intelligent nature—those individuals which were least inclined to run away from enemies being preserved rather than those which rendered themselves conspicuous by movement.