The Dying Huanaco. 428 
further, that these were seasons of suffering to the 
animal—the suffering, or discomfort and danger, 
having in the first place given rise to the habit. 
Assuming again that the habit had existed so long 
as to become, like that of the reptile, a fixed, immu- 
table instinct, a hereditary knowledge, so that the 
young huanacos, untaught by the adults, would go 
alone and unerringly to the meeting-place from any 
distance, it is but an easy step to the belief, that 
after the conditions had changed, and the refuges 
were no longer needed, this instinctive knowledge 
would still exist in them, and that they would take 
the old road when stimulated by the pain of a 
wound; or the miserable sensations experienced in 
disease ; or during the decay of the life-energy, when 
the senses grow dim, and the breath fails, and the 
blood is thin and cold. 
I presume that most persons who have observed 
animals a great deal have met with cases in which 
the animal has acted automatically, or instinctively, 
when the stimulus has been a false one. I will 
relate one such case, observed by myself, and which 
strikes me as being apposite to the question I am 
considering. It must be premised that this is an 
instance of an acquired habit; but this does not 
affect my argument, since I have all along assumed 
that the huanaco—a highly sagacious species in the 
highest class of vertebrates—first acquired a habit 
from experience of seeking a remembered refuge, 
and that such habit was the parent, as it were, or 
the first clay model, of the perfect and indestructible 
instinct that was to be. 
It is not an uncommon thing in the Argentine 
