Page:White - The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.djvu/298



They who write on natural history cannot too frequently advert to instinct, that wonderful limited faculty, which, in some instances, raises the brute creation as it were above reason, and in others leaves them so far below it. Philosophers have defined instinct to be chat secret influence by which every species is impelled naturally to pursue, at all times, The same way or track, without any teaching or example; whereas reason, without instruction, would often vary and do chat by many methods which instinct effects by one alone. Now this maxim must be taken in a qualified sense; for there are instances in which instinct does vary and conform to the circumstances of place and convenience.

It has been remarked chat every species of bird has a mode of nidification peculiar to itself; so that a schoolboy would at once pronounce on the sort of nest before him. This is the case among fields and woods, and wilds; but, in the villages round London, where mosses and gossamer, and cotton from vegetables, are hardly to be found, the nest of the chaffinch has not that elegant finished appearance, nor is it so beautifully studded with lichens, as in a more rural district: and the wren is obliged to construct its house with straws and dry grasses, which do not give it that rotundity and compactness so remarkable in the edifices of the little architect. Again, the regular nest of the house-martin is