Henry Morley - "Playful Poems"

Stephen Crane - "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets"

Maria Edgeworth - "The Parent's Assistant"

Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - "Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, V3"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: On the Origin of Species

C >> Charles Darwin >> On the Origin of Species




Natural selection will produce nothing in one species for the
exclusive good or injury of another; though it may well produce parts,
organs, and excretions highly useful or even indispensable, or highly
injurious to another species, but in all cases at the same time useful
to the owner. Natural selection in each well-stocked country, must act
chiefly through the competition of the inhabitants one with another,
and consequently will produce perfection, or strength in the battle
for life, only according to the standard of that country. Hence the
inhabitants of one country, generally the smaller one, will often
yield, as we see they do yield, to the inhabitants of another and
generally larger country. For in the larger country there will have
existed more individuals, and more diversified forms, and the
competition will have been severer, and thus the standard of
perfection will have been rendered higher. Natural selection will not
necessarily produce absolute perfection; nor, as far as we can judge
by our limited faculties, can absolute perfection be everywhere found.

On the theory of natural selection we can clearly understand the full
meaning of that old canon in natural history, "Natura non facit
saltum." This canon, if we look only to the present inhabitants of the
world, is not strictly correct, but if we include all those of past
times, it must by my theory be strictly true.

It is generally acknowledged that all organic beings have been formed
on two great laws--Unity of Type, and the Conditions of Existence. By
unity of type is meant that fundamental agreement in structure, which
we see in organic beings of the same class, and which is quite
independent of their habits of life. On my theory, unity of type is
explained by unity of descent. The expression of conditions of
existence, so often insisted on by the illustrious Cuvier, is fully
embraced by the principle of natural selection. For natural selection
acts by either now adapting the varying parts of each being to its
organic and inorganic conditions of life; or by having adapted them
during long-past periods of time: the adaptations being aided in some
cases by use and disuse, being slightly affected by the direct action
of the external conditions of life, and being in all cases subjected
to the several laws of growth. Hence, in fact, the law of the
Conditions of Existence is the higher law; as it includes, through the
inheritance of former adaptations, that of Unity of Type.


CHAPTER 7. INSTINCT.

Instincts comparable with habits, but different in their origin.
Instincts graduated.
Aphides and ants.
Instincts variable.
Domestic instincts, their origin.
Natural instincts of the cuckoo, ostrich, and parasitic bees.
Slave-making ants.
Hive-bee, its cell-making instinct.
Difficulties on the theory of the Natural Selection of instincts.
Neuter or sterile insects.
Summary.

The subject of instinct might have been worked into the previous
chapters; but I have thought that it would be more convenient to treat
the subject separately, especially as so wonderful an instinct as that
of the hive-bee making its cells will probably have occurred to many
readers, as a difficulty sufficient to overthrow my whole theory. I
must premise, that I have nothing to do with the origin of the primary
mental powers, any more than I have with that of life itself. We are
concerned only with the diversities of instinct and of the other
mental qualities of animals within the same class.

I will not attempt any definition of instinct. It would be easy to
show that several distinct mental actions are commonly embraced by
this term; but every one understands what is meant, when it is said
that instinct impels the cuckoo to migrate and to lay her eggs in
other birds' nests. An action, which we ourselves should require
experience to enable us to perform, when performed by an animal, more
especially by a very young one, without any experience, and when
performed by many individuals in the same way, without their knowing
for what purpose it is performed, is usually said to be instinctive.
But I could show that none of these characters of instinct are
universal. A little dose, as Pierre Huber expresses it, of judgment or
reason, often comes into play, even in animals very low in the scale
of nature.

Frederick Cuvier and several of the older metaphysicians have compared
instinct with habit. This comparison gives, I think, a remarkably
accurate notion of the frame of mind under which an instinctive action
is performed, but not of its origin. How unconsciously many habitual
actions are performed, indeed not rarely in direct opposition to our
conscious will! yet they may be modified by the will or reason. Habits
easily become associated with other habits, and with certain periods
of time and states of the body. When once acquired, they often remain
constant throughout life. Several other points of resemblance between
instincts and habits could be pointed out. As in repeating a
well-known song, so in instincts, one action follows another by a sort
of rhythm; if a person be interrupted in a song, or in repeating
anything by rote, he is generally forced to go back to recover the
habitual train of thought: so P. Huber found it was with a
caterpillar, which makes a very complicated hammock; for if he took a
caterpillar which had completed its hammock up to, say, the sixth
stage of construction, and put it into a hammock completed up only to
the third stage, the caterpillar simply re-performed the fourth,
fifth, and sixth stages of construction. If, however, a caterpillar
were taken out of a hammock made up, for instance, to the third stage,
and were put into one finished up to the sixth stage, so that much of
its work was already done for it, far from feeling the benefit of
this, it was much embarrassed, and, in order to complete its hammock,
seemed forced to start from the third stage, where it had left off,
and thus tried to complete the already finished work. If we suppose
any habitual action to become inherited--and I think it can be shown
that this does sometimes happen--then the resemblance between what
originally was a habit and an instinct becomes so close as not to be
distinguished. If Mozart, instead of playing the pianoforte at three
years old with wonderfully little practice, had played a tune with no
practice at all, he might truly be said to have done so instinctively.
But it would be the most serious error to suppose that the greater
number of instincts have been acquired by habit in one generation, and
then transmitted by inheritance to succeeding generations. It can be
clearly shown that the most wonderful instincts with which we are
acquainted, namely, those of the hive-bee and of many ants, could not
possibly have been thus acquired.

It will be universally admitted that instincts are as important as
corporeal structure for the welfare of each species, under its present
conditions of life. Under changed conditions of life, it is at least
possible that slight modifications of instinct might be profitable to
a species; and if it can be shown that instincts do vary ever so
little, then I can see no difficulty in natural selection preserving
and continually accumulating variations of instinct to any extent that
may be profitable. It is thus, as I believe, that all the most complex
and wonderful instincts have originated. As modifications of corporeal
structure arise from, and are increased by, use or habit, and are
diminished or lost by disuse, so I do not doubt it has been with
instincts. But I believe that the effects of habit are of quite
subordinate importance to the effects of the natural selection of what
may be called accidental variations of instincts;--that is of
variations produced by the same unknown causes which produce slight
deviations of bodily structure.

No complex instinct can possibly be produced through natural
selection, except by the slow and gradual accumulation of numerous,
slight, yet profitable, variations. Hence, as in the case of corporeal
structures, we ought to find in nature, not the actual transitional
gradations by which each complex instinct has been acquired--for these
could be found only in the lineal ancestors of each species--but we
ought to find in the collateral lines of descent some evidence of such
gradations; or we ought at least to be able to show that gradations of
some kind are possible; and this we certainly can do. I have been
surprised to find, making allowance for the instincts of animals
having been but little observed except in Europe and North America,
and for no instinct being known amongst extinct species, how very
generally gradations, leading to the most complex instincts, can be
discovered. The canon of "Natura non facit saltum" applies with almost
equal force to instincts as to bodily organs. Changes of instinct may
sometimes be facilitated by the same species having different
instincts at different periods of life, or at different seasons of the
year, or when placed under different circumstances, etc.; in which
case either one or the other instinct might be preserved by natural
selection. And such instances of diversity of instinct in the same
species can be shown to occur in nature.

Again as in the case of corporeal structure, and conformably with my
theory, the instinct of each species is good for itself, but has
never, as far as we can judge, been produced for the exclusive good of
others. One of the strongest instances of an animal apparently
performing an action for the sole good of another, with which I am
acquainted, is that of aphides voluntarily yielding their sweet
excretion to ants: that they do so voluntarily, the following facts
show. I removed all the ants from a group of about a dozen aphides on
a dock-plant, and prevented their attendance during several hours.
After this interval, I felt sure that the aphides would want to
excrete. I watched them for some time through a lens, but not one
excreted; I then tickled and stroked them with a hair in the same
manner, as well as I could, as the ants do with their antennae; but
not one excreted. Afterwards I allowed an ant to visit them, and it
immediately seemed, by its eager way of running about, to be well
aware what a rich flock it had discovered; it then began to play with
its antennae on the abdomen first of one aphis and then of another;
and each aphis, as soon as it felt the antennae, immediately lifted up
its abdomen and excreted a limpid drop of sweet juice, which was
eagerly devoured by the ant. Even the quite young aphides behaved in
this manner, showing that the action was instinctive, and not the
result of experience. But as the excretion is extremely viscid, it is
probably a convenience to the aphides to have it removed; and
therefore probably the aphides do not instinctively excrete for the
sole good of the ants. Although I do not believe that any animal in
the world performs an action for the exclusive good of another of a
distinct species, yet each species tries to take advantage of the
instincts of others, as each takes advantage of the weaker bodily
structure of others. So again, in some few cases, certain instincts
cannot be considered as absolutely perfect; but as details on this and
other such points are not indispensable, they may be here passed over.

As some degree of variation in instincts under a state of nature, and
the inheritance of such variations, are indispensable for the action
of natural selection, as many instances as possible ought to have been
here given; but want of space prevents me. I can only assert, that
instincts certainly do vary--for instance, the migratory instinct,
both in extent and direction, and in its total loss. So it is with the
nests of birds, which vary partly in dependence on the situations
chosen, and on the nature and temperature of the country inhabited,
but often from causes wholly unknown to us: Audubon has given several
remarkable cases of differences in nests of the same species in the
northern and southern United States. Fear of any particular enemy is
certainly an instinctive quality, as may be seen in nestling birds,
though it is strengthened by experience, and by the sight of fear of
the same enemy in other animals. But fear of man is slowly acquired,
as I have elsewhere shown, by various animals inhabiting desert
islands; and we may see an instance of this, even in England, in the
greater wildness of all our large birds than of our small birds; for
the large birds have been most persecuted by man. We may safely
attribute the greater wildness of our large birds to this cause; for
in uninhabited islands large birds are not more fearful than small;
and the magpie, so wary in England, is tame in Norway, as is the
hooded crow in Egypt.

That the general disposition of individuals of the same species, born
in a state of nature, is extremely diversified, can be shown by a
multitude of facts. Several cases also, could be given, of occasional
and strange habits in certain species, which might, if advantageous to
the species, give rise, through natural selection, to quite new
instincts. But I am well aware that these general statements, without
facts given in detail, can produce but a feeble effect on the reader's
mind. I can only repeat my assurance, that I do not speak without good
evidence.

The possibility, or even probability, of inherited variations of
instinct in a state of nature will be strengthened by briefly
considering a few cases under domestication. We shall thus also be
enabled to see the respective parts which habit and the selection of
so-called accidental variations have played in modifying the mental
qualities of our domestic animals. A number of curious and authentic
instances could be given of the inheritance of all shades of
disposition and tastes, and likewise of the oddest tricks, associated
with certain frames of mind or periods of time. But let us look to the
familiar case of the several breeds of dogs: it cannot be doubted that
young pointers (I have myself seen a striking instance) will sometimes
point and even back other dogs the very first time that they are taken
out; retrieving is certainly in some degree inherited by retrievers;
and a tendency to run round, instead of at, a flock of sheep, by
shepherd-dogs. I cannot see that these actions, performed without
experience by the young, and in nearly the same manner by each
individual, performed with eager delight by each breed, and without
the end being known,--for the young pointer can no more know that he
points to aid his master, than the white butterfly knows why she lays
her eggs on the leaf of the cabbage,--I cannot see that these actions
differ essentially from true instincts. If we were to see one kind of
wolf, when young and without any training, as soon as it scented its
prey, stand motionless like a statue, and then slowly crawl forward
with a peculiar gait; and another kind of wolf rushing round, instead
of at, a herd of deer, and driving them to a distant point, we should
assuredly call these actions instinctive. Domestic instincts, as they
may be called, are certainly far less fixed or invariable than natural
instincts; but they have been acted on by far less rigorous selection,
and have been transmitted for an incomparably shorter period, under
less fixed conditions of life.

How strongly these domestic instincts, habits, and dispositions are
inherited, and how curiously they become mingled, is well shown when
different breeds of dogs are crossed. Thus it is known that a cross
with a bull-dog has affected for many generations the courage and
obstinacy of greyhounds; and a cross with a greyhound has given to a
whole family of shepherd-dogs a tendency to hunt hares. These domestic
instincts, when thus tested by crossing, resemble natural instincts,
which in a like manner become curiously blended together, and for a
long period exhibit traces of the instincts of either parent: for
example, Le Roy describes a dog, whose great-grandfather was a wolf,
and this dog showed a trace of its wild parentage only in one way, by
not coming in a straight line to his master when called.

Domestic instincts are sometimes spoken of as actions which have
become inherited solely from long-continued and compulsory habit, but
this, I think, is not true. No one would ever have thought of
teaching, or probably could have taught, the tumbler-pigeon to
tumble,--an action which, as I have witnessed, is performed by young
birds, that have never seen a pigeon tumble. We may believe that some
one pigeon showed a slight tendency to this strange habit, and that
the long-continued selection of the best individuals in successive
generations made tumblers what they now are; and near Glasgow there
are house-tumblers, as I hear from Mr. Brent, which cannot fly
eighteen inches high without going head over heels. It may be doubted
whether any one would have thought of training a dog to point, had not
some one dog naturally shown a tendency in this line; and this is
known occasionally to happen, as I once saw in a pure terrier. When
the first tendency was once displayed, methodical selection and the
inherited effects of compulsory training in each successive generation
would soon complete the work; and unconscious selection is still at
work, as each man tries to procure, without intending to improve the
breed, dogs which will stand and hunt best. On the other hand, habit
alone in some cases has sufficed; no animal is more difficult to tame
than the young of the wild rabbit; scarcely any animal is tamer than
the young of the tame rabbit; but I do not suppose that domestic
rabbits have ever been selected for tameness; and I presume that we
must attribute the whole of the inherited change from extreme wildness
to extreme tameness, simply to habit and long-continued close
confinement.

Natural instincts are lost under domestication: a remarkable instance
of this is seen in those breeds of fowls which very rarely or never
become "broody," that is, never wish to sit on their eggs. Familiarity
alone prevents our seeing how universally and largely the minds of our
domestic animals have been modified by domestication. It is scarcely
possible to doubt that the love of man has become instinctive in the
dog. All wolves, foxes, jackals, and species of the cat genus, when
kept tame, are most eager to attack poultry, sheep, and pigs; and this
tendency has been found incurable in dogs which have been brought home
as puppies from countries, such as Tierra del Fuego and Australia,
where the savages do not keep these domestic animals. How rarely, on
the other hand, do our civilised dogs, even when quite young, require
to be taught not to attack poultry, sheep, and pigs! No doubt they
occasionally do make an attack, and are then beaten; and if not cured,
they are destroyed; so that habit, with some degree of selection, has
probably concurred in civilising by inheritance our dogs. On the other
hand, young chickens have lost, wholly by habit, that fear of the dog
and cat which no doubt was originally instinctive in them, in the same
way as it is so plainly instinctive in young pheasants, though reared
under a hen. It is not that chickens have lost all fear, but fear only
of dogs and cats, for if the hen gives the danger-chuckle, they will
run (more especially young turkeys) from under her, and conceal
themselves in the surrounding grass or thickets; and this is evidently
done for the instinctive purpose of allowing, as we see in wild
ground-birds, their mother to fly away. But this instinct retained by
our chickens has become useless under domestication, for the
mother-hen has almost lost by disuse the power of flight.

Hence, we may conclude, that domestic instincts have been acquired and
natural instincts have been lost partly by habit, and partly by man
selecting and accumulating during successive generations, peculiar
mental habits and actions, which at first appeared from what we must
in our ignorance call an accident. In some cases compulsory habit
alone has sufficed to produce such inherited mental changes; in other
cases compulsory habit has done nothing, and all has been the result
of selection, pursued both methodically and unconsciously; but in most
cases, probably, habit and selection have acted together.

We shall, perhaps, best understand how instincts in a state of nature
have become modified by selection, by considering a few cases. I will
select only three, out of the several which I shall have to discuss in
my future work,--namely, the instinct which leads the cuckoo to lay
her eggs in other birds' nests; the slave-making instinct of certain
ants; and the comb-making power of the hive-bee: these two latter
instincts have generally, and most justly, been ranked by naturalists
as the most wonderful of all known instincts.

It is now commonly admitted that the more immediate and final cause of
the cuckoo's instinct is, that she lays her eggs, not daily, but at
intervals of two or three days; so that, if she were to make her own
nest and sit on her own eggs, those first laid would have to be left
for some time unincubated, or there would be eggs and young birds of
different ages in the same nest. If this were the case, the process of
laying and hatching might be inconveniently long, more especially as
she has to migrate at a very early period; and the first hatched young
would probably have to be fed by the male alone. But the American
cuckoo is in this predicament; for she makes her own nest and has eggs
and young successively hatched, all at the same time. It has been
asserted that the American cuckoo occasionally lays her eggs in other
birds' nests; but I hear on the high authority of Dr. Brewer, that
this is a mistake. Nevertheless, I could give several instances of
various birds which have been known occasionally to lay their eggs in
other birds' nests. Now let us suppose that the ancient progenitor of
our European cuckoo had the habits of the American cuckoo; but that
occasionally she laid an egg in another bird's nest. If the old bird
profited by this occasional habit, or if the young were made more
vigorous by advantage having been taken of the mistaken maternal
instinct of another bird, than by their own mother's care, encumbered
as she can hardly fail to be by having eggs and young of different
ages at the same time; then the old birds or the fostered young would
gain an advantage. And analogy would lead me to believe, that the
young thus reared would be apt to follow by inheritance the occasional
and aberrant habit of their mother, and in their turn would be apt to
lay their eggs in other birds' nests, and thus be successful in
rearing their young. By a continued process of this nature, I believe
that the strange instinct of our cuckoo could be, and has been,
generated. I may add that, according to Dr. Gray and to some other
observers, the European cuckoo has not utterly lost all maternal love
and care for her own offspring.

The occasional habit of birds laying their eggs in other birds' nests,
either of the same or of a distinct species, is not very uncommon with
the Gallinaceae; and this perhaps explains the origin of a singular
instinct in the allied group of ostriches. For several hen ostriches,
at least in the case of the American species, unite and lay first a
few eggs in one nest and then in another; and these are hatched by the
males. This instinct may probably be accounted for by the fact of the
hens laying a large number of eggs; but, as in the case of the cuckoo,
at intervals of two or three days. This instinct, however, of the
American ostrich has not as yet been perfected; for a surprising
number of eggs lie strewed over the plains, so that in one day's
hunting I picked up no less than twenty lost and wasted eggs.

Many bees are parasitic, and always lay their eggs in the nests of
bees of other kinds. This case is more remarkable than that of the
cuckoo; for these bees have not only their instincts but their
structure modified in accordance with their parasitic habits; for they
do not possess the pollen-collecting apparatus which would be
necessary if they had to store food for their own young. Some species,
likewise, of Sphegidae (wasp-like insects) are parasitic on other
species; and M. Fabre has lately shown good reason for believing that
although the Tachytes nigra generally makes its own burrow and stores
it with paralysed prey for its own larvae to feed on, yet that when
this insect finds a burrow already made and stored by another sphex,
it takes advantage of the prize, and becomes for the occasion
parasitic. In this case, as with the supposed case of the cuckoo, I
can see no difficulty in natural selection making an occasional habit
permanent, if of advantage to the species, and if the insect whose
nest and stored food are thus feloniously appropriated, be not thus
exterminated.

SLAVE-MAKING INSTINCT.

This remarkable instinct was first discovered in the Formica
(Polyerges) rufescens by Pierre Huber, a better observer even than his
celebrated father. This ant is absolutely dependent on its slaves;
without their aid, the species would certainly become extinct in a
single year. The males and fertile females do no work. The workers or
sterile females, though most energetic and courageous in capturing
slaves, do no other work. They are incapable of making their own
nests, or of feeding their own larvae. When the old nest is found
inconvenient, and they have to migrate, it is the slaves which
determine the migration, and actually carry their masters in their
jaws. So utterly helpless are the masters, that when Huber shut up
thirty of them without a slave, but with plenty of the food which they
like best, and with their larvae and pupae to stimulate them to work,
they did nothing; they could not even feed themselves, and many
perished of hunger. Huber then introduced a single slave (F. fusca),
and she instantly set to work, fed and saved the survivors; made some
cells and tended the larvae, and put all to rights. What can be more
extraordinary than these well-ascertained facts? If we had not known
of any other slave-making ant, it would have been hopeless to have
speculated how so wonderful an instinct could have been perfected.