I One Day Met With A Curious
Example Of Failure Of Instinct, Which, By Showing It To Be
Fallible, Renders It Very Doubtful Whether It Is Anything More
Than Hereditary Habit, Dependent On Delicate Modifications Of
Sensation.
Some sailors cut down a good-sized tree, and, as is
always my practice, I visited it daily for some time in search of
insects.
Among other beetles came swarms of the little
cylindrical woodborers (Platypus, Tesserocerus, &c.), and
commenced making holes in the bark. After a day or two I was
surprised to find hundreds of them sticking in the holes they had
bored, and on examination discovered that the milky sap of the
tree was of the nature of gutta-percha, hardening rapidly on
exposure to the air, and glueing the little animals in self-dug
graves. The habit of boring holes in trees in which to deposit
their eggs, was not accompanied by a sufficient instinctive
knowledge of which trees were suitable, and which destructive to
them. If, as is very probable, these trees have an attractive
odour to certain species of borers, it might very likely lead to
their becoming extinct; while other species, to whom the same
odour was disagreeable, and who therefore avoided the dangerous
trees, would survive, and would be credited by us with an
instinct, whereas they would really be guided by a simple
sensation.
Those curious little beetles, the Brenthidae, were very abundant
in Aru. The females have a pointed rostrum, with which they bore
deep holes in the bark of dead trees, often burying the rostrum
up to the eyes, and in these holes deposit their eggs.
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