INSTINCT
Man is gifted with the supreme endowment of reason. This marks humanity off from all the rest of the animal creation. But the Creator institutes a law of compensation. There are certain powers and faculties in inferior creatures which have never been evolved in man, and which are plainly evidences of supernatural power applied for the benefit of beings denied the prerogative of reason.
How does it come about that if a salmon
is taken when only a few months old from
its native fjord on the coast of Norway, and
marked and then sent into the sea again, it
may, after traversing the ocean for thousands
of miles, be found again the next year
in that same fjord? It has returned without
fail to its birthplace. The reason is that
God gave it a miraculous guide-book called
instinct. How comes it that when, in a beehive,
the temperature rises so that the wax
might melt, every tenth bee glues its feet
down to the board, and fans with its wings
at a tremendous velocity as long as may be
necessary? It is because God gave this little
creature the same infallible guide-book. How
is it that the same pairs of swallows return
all the way from Africa to rear a fresh
family in the same old nests under the eaves?
It is because that same miraculous instinct
led them unerringly. (Text.)
(1641)
INSTINCT ADAPTED TO EMERGENCY
In guarding against evils should we not be as fertile in expedients to adapt our defense to the kind of weapons we possess as some cattle are:
The plainsmen on Western cattle-ranches
have called attention to an illustration of
the adaptability of animal instinct to emergencies.
The cattle of former days were of the long-horned kind. When the herd was threatened with an attack by wolves, the calves were placed in the middle of the bunch and the older animals formed themselves into a solid phalanx about them, all facing outward.
The cattle of to-day are largely hornless. If, as occasionally happens still, the herd is attacked by wolves, the calves are guarded as before, but the herd faces in instead of out. Their hoofs, not their horns, are now their weapons.
(1642)
Instinct of Animals—See Faith Better Than Sight. Instinct of Insects—See Shelter. INSTINCT, THE HOMING A well-known minister of Austin, Texas, retells a story which was related to him by a friend living in Lawrence, Massachusetts: "He raised a dog, crossed with hound and pointer, and littered in Lawrence. When a year old he took the young dog to Boston, got on board of a sailing-vessel, went by sea and river to Bangor, Maine, drove forty miles into the woods at Cleveland's Camp and hunted there two weeks, the dog proving to be a great success for quick, fast runs and returns to camp. "After the hunting was over and while on his back trip to Bangor, the dog jumped from the wagon into the bushes, having heard or smelled a deer, and went off on a hot chase. The boats ran only once in two weeks, so that, much as he valued the dog, it was necessary to go on. He took the boat at Bangor, returned by river and sea to Boston and back to Lawrence. About two weeks afterward the dog crawled into his yard, footsore and half-starved, but safe at home and glad to get back." (Text.)—Harper's Weekly.
(1643)
See Direction, Sense of.
Instruction—See Food and Exercise.
INSTRUMENTS
When Saladin looked at the sword of
Richard the Lion-Hearted, he wondered
that a blade so ordinary should have wrought
such mighty deeds. The English King bared
his arm and said: "It was not the sword
that did these things; it was the arm of
Richard."
(1644)
INSTRUMENTS, IMPORTANCE OF
GOOD
Dr. Z. F. Vaughn, well known in medical
and scientific circles, has perfected a process
for tempering to the hardness of steel the
ductile metals, gold, silver and copper. Already
Dr. Vaughn is manufacturing a large
number of gold-bladed scalpels, probes, hypo-
