"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 descent 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 into 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 reviewers 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 contemplate.
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,[III-19] we know
of nothing in instinct surpassing that of an animal so high as a bird,
the talegal, the male of which plumes himself upon making a hot-bed in
which to batch his partners eggs--which he tends and regulates the beat
of about as carefully and skillfully as the unplumed biped does an
eccaleobion.
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