Accommodation is necessary, or it could not always
produce the effects for which it is intended. Would the instinct of the
spider be complete, if, after it has guided her to spin a web so neat
and trim and regular, it did not also lead her to repair her broken
snare, when the cords have been sundered by the struggles of some
powerful captive? But this pliancy of the spider's instinct is no more
remarkable than the contingent operation of the instincts of many
species of animals. "It is remarkable," says Kirby, "that many of the
insects which are occasionally observed to emigrate are not usually
social animals, but seem to congregate, like swallows, merely for the
purpose of emigration." When certain rare emergencies occur, which
render it necessary for the insects to migrate, a contingent instinct
develops itself, and renders an unsocial species gregarious.
It is probable that most of our domesticated species, exhibiting as
they do in that condition attainments foreign to their natural habits
and faculties in a wild state, were endowed with provisional instincts
with a view to their association with man. But generally the docility
of animals does not extend to attainments which are radically different
from their habits and faculties in a wild state.
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