organs of
hearing. But besides these, the Orthoptera (such as grasshoppers, &c.)
have what are supposed to be ears on their fore legs, and Mr. Lowne
believes that the little stalked balls, which are the sole remnants of
the hind wings in flies, are also organs of hearing or of some analogous
sense. In flies, too, the third joint of the antennae contains thousands
of nerve-fibres, which terminate in small open cells, and this Mr. Lowne
believes to be the organ of smell, or of some other, perhaps new, sense.
It is quite evident, therefore, that insects may possess senses which
give them a knowledge of that which we can never perceive, and enable
them to perform acts which to us are incomprehensible. In the midst of
this complete ignorance of their faculties and inner nature, is it wise
for us to judge so boldly of their powers by a comparison with our own?
How can we pretend to fathom the profound mystery of their mental
nature, and decide what, and how much, they can perceive or remember,
reason or reflect! To leap at one bound from our own consciousness to
that of an insect's, is as unreasonable and absurd as if, with a pretty
good knowledge of the multiplication table, we were to go straight to
the study of the calculus of functions, or as if our comparative
anatomists should pass from the study of man's bony structure to that of
the fish, and, without any knowledge of the numerous intermediate forms,
were to attempt to determine the homologies between these distant types
of vertebrata. In such a case would not error be inevitable, and would
not continued study in the same direction only render the erroneous
conclusions more ingrained and more irremovable.

_Definition of Instinct._

Before going further into this subject, we must determine what we mean
by the term instinct. It has been variously defined as--"disposition
operating without the aid of instruction or experience," "a mental power
totally independent of organization," or "a power enabling an animal to
do that which, in those things man can do, results from a chain of
reasoning, and in things which man cannot do, is not to be explained by
any efforts of the intellectual faculties." We find, too, that the word
instinct is very frequently applied to acts which are evidently the
result either of organization or of habit. The colt or calf is said to
walk instinctively, almost as soon as it is born; but this is solely due
to its organization, which renders wa