Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/147

Rh has, for the most part, nothing to learn; because its little life flows from its organization like melody from a music box. But we need not enlarge on this a second time.

In seeking to understand the phenomena of instinct we of course get the full benefit of the law of Natural Science, which though it throws no light on the origin of anything, mental or physical—for, as Mr. Darwin says, it 'has no relation whatever to the primary cause of any modification of structure'—nevertheless helps us to understand the existence of instincts far removed from the circumstances or conditions of life under which they could have been acquired. Suppose a Robinson Crusoe to take, soon after his landing, a couple of parrots, and to teach them to say in very good English, "How do you do, sir?"—that the young of these birds are also taught by Mr. Crusoe and their parents to say, "How do you do, sir?"—and that Mr. Crusoe, having little else to do, sets to work to prove the doctrine of Inherited Association by direct experiment. He continues his teaching, and every year breeds from the birds of the last and previous years that say "How do you do sir?" most frequently and with the best accent. After a sufficient number of generations his young parrots, continually hearing their parents and a hundred other birds saying "How do you do, sir?" begin to repeat these words so soon that an experiment is needed to decide whether it is by instinct or imitation; and perhaps it is part of both. Eventually, however, the instinct is established. And though now Mr. Crusoe dies, and leaves no record of his work, the instinct will not die, not for a long time at least; and if the parrots themselves have acquired a taste for good English the best speakers will be sexually selected, and the instinct will certainly endure to astonish and perplex mankind, though in truth we may as well wonder at the crowing of the cock or the song of the skylark. Again, turkeys have an instinctive art of catching flies, which, it is manifest, the creatures in their present shape may have acquired by experience. But suppose the circumstances of their life to change; flies steadily become more abundant, and other kinds of food scarcer: the best fly-catchers are now the fittest to live, and each generation they are naturally selected. This process goes on, experience probably adding to the instinct in ways that we need not attempt to conceive, until a variety or species is produced that feeds on flies alone. To look at, this new bird will differ considerably from its turkey ancestors; for change in food and in habits of life will have affected its physical conformation, and every useful modification of structure will have been preserved by natural selection. My point however is, that thus, by no inconceivable steps, would be produced a race of birds depending for all their food on an instinctive art, which they, as then constituted, could never have acquired, because they never could have existed without it.