52 Tr ansae tions . — Zoo logy. 



any cuckoo lore. Therefore the knowledge of geography and 

 theu' own peculiar impressions must have been laid in the 

 egg, or, in other words, must have been hereditary ; and why 

 not the same with the swallows ? 



If the parent swallow has to lead her young and point out 

 routes and localities, it is a very poor plan compared with 

 that of the cuckoos ; because, if anything happened to the 

 parents, or if they were getting old or weakly, their young 

 would perish with them for want of the knowledge that could 

 as well have been laid in tlie egg. 



Every one knows that a trout will teach nothing to its 

 young ones, but will eat them at the first opportunity ; yet 

 they know all about visible fishing-lines, and the way to as- 

 cend rivers and rapids at the appointed time, which must be 

 hereditary, when they had no experience and no teachers. 



The young snipes, flying away to some far-off country, may 

 have all the geographical knowledge that their parents had 

 gathered for ages as to where and when to find the marshes 

 and springs that shelter their food in a land that they had 

 never seen, and probably never heard of. Therefore the long 

 flights of migratory birds may be directed by knowledge 

 derived from far-distant parents that first made their journeys 

 when land was almost continuous. 



What a wonderful thing is mind, of which we seem only to 

 have a part, deficient in valuable faculties that other animals 

 possess — deficient in memory and thought, and in the power 

 of transmitting or even retaining the hard-earned acquirements 

 that our voungsters need so much. 



However, I saw recently in Dunedin what I take to be a 

 case of hereditary aptitude in a little boy, who was better read 

 and more intelligent at nine years of age than many boys at 

 sixteen. And when we remember our progress in the last 

 generation there appear great possibilities in the next few 

 thousand years, which will skip away like hours when our 

 time is up. Then, if any of us are allowed to look back at 

 this old world, we may see hereditary knowledge becoming a 

 part of men's minds, and ignorance and imposture things of 

 the past. The power of heredity to improve we readily admit 

 among animals, but ignore in ourselves, not because its laws 

 are so obscure, but because our whims are easier to follow ; 

 and, though we experiment in all other branches of science, 

 this, the most important of all, we have hardly the courage- 

 to touch. 



