(1640)
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.