^o8 BIOLOGICAL LECTURES. 



rudiments of organization without invoking the aid of intelli- 

 gence, or finding any way in which it could be supposed to 

 have been a guiding factor in development. 



The organic basis of the preying instinct may have grown 

 and multiplied in different phyla a long time before receiving 

 much aid from intelligence. The rapidity and freedom of modi- 

 fication would be very much limited when fission ceased and 

 reproduction by germs became the sole mode of generation. 

 Very early in the vertebrate phylum, possibly at its dawn, the 

 chief characters of the instinct, as we now find it, were proba- 

 bly fixed in structural elements differing from those in Nectiirus 

 only in superficial details. The strikingly fish-like character of 

 the behavior certainly suggests as much. 



5. Meaning and General Occurrence. — If now we look more 

 closely at the purposive character of the behavior, it will 

 become clearer that the instinct is shared, not only by animals 

 below NecUinis, but also by some far above it. The pause 

 before the final act of seizing is a well-marked feature, which 

 means locating the pr-ey and fixing the aim. The same action 

 with the same meaning runs all through the different branches 

 of the vertebrate phylum. It is, as I have already said, espe- 

 cially characteristic of the fishes and amphibia, and it is not 

 rare among the higher branches, the reptiles, birds, and 

 mammals. It may be seen to good advantage in the turtles, 

 and even the common fowl halts on coming up to the insect it 

 is pursuing in order to make sure its aim. I believe the same 

 instinct underlies the act of pointing in the dog. The origin 

 of this behavior in pointers cannot be referred to training, as 

 was clearly seen by Darwin. ^ 



It may be doubted [says Darwin] whether any one would have 

 thought of training a dog to point had not some one dog naturally 

 shown a tendency in this line, and this is known occasionally to 

 happen, as I once saw in a pure terrier ; the act of pointing is prob- 

 ably, as many have thought, only the exaggerated pause of an animal 

 preparing to spring on its prey. When the first tendency to point was 

 once displayed, methodical selection and the inherited effects of com- 

 pulsory training in each successive generation would soon complete 



the work. 



1 Origin of Species, p. 207. 



