CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 167 



diness and perseverance that is never to be found in any other breed. 

 Hounds keep together, or pack, as it is technically called; terriers and spa- 

 niels will hunt a scent, but not like hounds: and it is not possible to make 

 them pack by any training. 



" Fox hounds and harriers, even when taken out for the first time, have a 

 very different mode of hunting : the fox hound will press forward, and cast 

 wide ; the harrier will keep to, or, as the sportsmen say, stick to the scent, 

 and cast back. 



" It is well known to all sportsmen that these different modes of hunting 

 are essential to the successful pursuit of the fox and of the hare. 



" Most young hounds will hunt partridges or pheasants, but they will almost 

 always leave it off if slightly corrected ; but the pointer, who is of a breed 

 that has been long used for the pursuit of the feathered game, although se- 

 verely chastised every time that he finds partridges (and this is often done 

 daily to young dogs for many successive weeks, with the intention of making 

 them point), will continue to hunt them with the same eagerness as at first. 



" The terrier (a breed that is now almost extinct in England) will be very 

 much excited by the scent of a pole-cat, or of any of the animals commonly 

 called vermin ; but this scent will not produce the same effect upon dogs of 

 any other breed. 



" I was told by a man in Hampshire, who was in the practice of finding 

 truffles with dogs, that it was essential to procure those that were of a good 

 breed, or, as I should say, whose family had long been used to find this ve- 

 getable. 



*? There are many breeds of water dogs ; they are very different from each 

 other, and vary in size and appearance, from the large Newfoundland dog to 

 the little poodle. But there is one propensity that is common to them all — 

 they will fetch and carry, or bring the game to their masters with very little 

 or no teaching. This property may be considered as peculiar to the water 

 dog, although it may be found" in some few individuals of other breeds ; but 

 it would require a great deal of time, and some skill, to teach it to hounds, 

 greyhounds, and other dogs. 



"It is obvious that a water dog that will not bring the game to his master 

 is absolutely useless ; therefore, to teach him to perform this essential ser- 

 vice must have been, at all times, the first object in his education. 



" No one can suppose that nature has given to these several varieties of 

 the same species such very different instinctive propensities, and that each 

 of these breeds should possess those that are best fitted for the uses to which 

 they are respectively applied. 



" It seems more probable that these breeds, having been long treated as 

 they now are, and applied to the same uses, should have acquired habits, by 

 experience and instruction, which, in course of time, have become hereditary. 



* From these observations, and from many others that might, perhaps, not 

 be intelligible to those who have not attended to the habits of the brute crea- 

 tion, I am led to conclude that by far the greater part of the propensities 

 that are generally supposed to be instinctive are not implanted in animals by 

 nature, but that they are the result of long experience, acquired and accu- 

 mulated through many generations, so as, in the course of time, to assume 

 the character of instinct. 



" How far these observations may apply to the human race I do not pre- 

 tend to say ; I cannot, however, but think that part of what is called national 

 character may, in some degree, be influenced by what I have endeavoured 

 to prove, namely, that acquired habits become hereditary." 



Sir John Sebright will, we trust, follow up this treatise, and give 

 to it a form of more general intelligence and usefulness. 



