Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/610

592 working singly is sufficient to develop some instincts. But, no doubt, in the case of most instincts intelligence and natural selection have gone hand in hand, or co-operated, in producing the observed results—natural selection always securing and rendering permanent any advances which intelligence may have made. Thus, to take one case as an illustration. Dr. Rae tells me that the grouse of North America have the curious instinct of burrowing a tunnel just below the surface of the snow. In the end of this tunnel they sleep securely, for when any four-footed enemy approaches the mouth of the tunnel, the bird, in order to escape, has only to fly up through the thin covering of snow. Now, in this case the grouse probably began to burrow in the snow for the sake of warmth, or concealment, or both; and, if so, thus far the burrowing was an act of intelligence. But the longer the tunnel the better would it serve in the above-described means of escape; therefore natural selection would tend to preserve the birds which made the longest tunnels, until the utmost benefit that length of tunnel could give had been attained.

And similarly, I believe, all the host of animal instincts may be fully explained by the joint operation of these two causes—intelligent adjustment and survival of the fittest. For now I may draw attention to another fact which is of great importance, viz., that instincts admit of being modified as modifying circumstances may require. In other words, instincts are not rigidly fixed, but are plastic, and their plasticity renders them capable of improvement or of alteration, according as intelligent observation requires. The assistance which is thus rendered by intelligence to natural selection must obviously be very great, for under any change in the surrounding conditions of life which calls for a corresponding change in the ancestral instincts of the animal, natural selection is not left to wait, as it were, for the required variations to arise fortuitously; but is from the first furnished by the intelligence of the animal with the particular variations which are needed.

In order to demonstrate this principle of the variation of instinct under the guidance of intelligence, I may here introduce a few examples.

Huber observes, "How ductile is the instinct of bees, and how readily it adapts itself to the place, the circumstances, and the needs of the community!" Thus, by means of contrivances which I need not here explain, he forced the bees either to cease building combs, or to change their instinctive mode of building from above downward, to building in the reverse direction, and also horizontally. The bees in each case changed their mode of building accordingly. Again, an irregular piece of comb, when placed by Huber on a smooth table, tottered so much that the bumble-bees could not work on so unsteady a basis. To prevent the tottering, two or three bees held the comb by fixing their front-feet on the table, and their hind-feet on the comb.