596 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tioned by him, seems to me of no less significance — I mean the instinct 

 of guarding property. This is a purely artificial instinct, created by 

 man expressly for his own purposes : and it is now so strongly in- 

 grained in the intelligence of the dog that it is unusual to find any 

 individual animal in which it is wholly absent. Thus, we all know 

 that, without any training, a dog will allow a stranger to pass by his 

 master's gate without molestation, but that as soon as the stranger 

 passes within the gate, and so trespasses upon what the dog knows to 

 be his master's territory, the animal immediately begins to bai'k, in 

 order to give his master notice of the invasion. And this leads me to 

 observe that barking is in itself an artificial instinct, developed, I be- 

 lieve, as an offshoot from the more general instinct of guarding prop- 

 erty. None of the wild species of dog are known to bark, and there- 

 fore we must conclude that barking is an artificial instinct, acquired 

 by the domestic dog for the purpose of notifying to his master the 

 presence of thieves or enemies. I may further observe that this in- 

 stinct of guarding property extends to the formation of an instinctive 

 idea on the part of the animal, of itself as constituting part of that 

 property. If, for instance, a friend gives you temporary charge of his 

 dog, even although the dog may never have seen you before, observ- 

 ing that you are his master's friend and that his master intends you to 

 take charge of him, he immediately transfers his allegiance from his 

 master to you, as to a deputed owner, and will then follow you through 

 any number of crowded streets with the utmost confidence. Thus, 

 whether we look to the negative or to the positive influences of domes- 

 tication upon the psychology of the dog, we must conclude that a 

 change has been wrought, so profound that the whole mental constitu- 

 tion of the animal now presents a more express reference to the needs 

 of another, and his enslaving animal, than it does to his own. Indeed, 

 we may say that there is no one feature in the whole psychology of 

 the dog which has been left unaltered by the influence of man, ex- 

 cepting only those instincts which, being neither useful nor harmful 

 to man, have never been subject to his operation — such, for instance, 

 as the instinct of burying food, turning round to make a bed before 

 lying down, etc. 



I will now turn to another branch of the subject, and one which, 

 although in my opinion of the greatest importance, has never before 

 been alluded to ; I mean the local and specific variations of instinct. 

 By a local variation of instinct, I mean a variation presented by a 

 species in a state of nature over some particular area of geographical 

 distribution. It is easy to see the importance of such local variations 

 of instinct as evidence of the transmutation of instinct, if we reflect 

 that such a local variation is obviously on its way to becoming a new 

 instinct. For example, the beavers in California have ceased to make 

 dams, the hyenas in South Africa have ceased to make burrows, and 

 there is a squirrel in the neighborhood of Mount Airy which has 



