CHAPTER X.
Moonlight.—Instinct and Reason.—Death's Head Moth.—Bittern.—Water-rail.—Quail.—Golden Plover.—Hen-Harrier and Weasel.—Preserving Bird-skins.
They anchored that night just inside Hoveton Great Broad. The moon rose large and round, and lake and marsh slept still in her mellow light. The boys sat on deck watching the reflection of the moon in the water, and listening to the cries of the night-birds around them and the splash of the fish in the shallow margins. Dick said,—
"Is it not wonderful that the butterfly knows on which plant she is to lay her eggs? How does the swallow-tail know that she must lay them on the wild carrot or on the meadow-sweet; the death's-head moth on the potato; and the white butterfly on the cabbage? How is it that they select these plants, seeing that it is all strange and new to them? It is very wonderful!"
"Yes," said Jimmy, "and it cannot be reason, because they can have no facts to reason from, so it must be instinct."
"Well, I don't like talking anything like cant, and you won't accuse me of that if I say that it seems to me that instinct is a personal prompting and direction of God to the lower animals for their good, and I don't believe we think of that enough," said Dick.
Moonlight Scene.