DISCUSSIONS ON INSTINCT 287 
I trust Prof. Baldwin will not insist on coining many 
new terms, or favour their adoption, as far as evolution 
is concerned. “Social heredity” is about equivalent, 
is it not, to social environment, and the entire environ- 
ment is one into which, as a rule, the animal is born, 
so why speak of “social heredity”? Technicalities 
have their advantages, but they often conduce to 
mental myopia, and hamper the comprehension and 
progress of truth by binding it up in packages, so to 
speak—packages which all cannot readily undo. 
WESLEY MILLS. 
M‘Gitt UNIVERSITY. 
In Prof. Mills’ communications on “ Instinct,’ he 
seems to have missed the point in the case of each of 
those criticised—“ The Writer of the Note,” Prof. Morgan, 
and myself. In the case of the fowl’s drinking, it is 
not the mere fact that drinking and eating may differ 
in the degree to which the performance is congenital ; 
the reports seem to show that this varies in different 
fowl, but that instincts (in this case drinking) may be 
only half congenital, and may have to be supplemented 
by imitation, accident, intelligence, instruction, etc., in 
order to act, even when the actions are so necessary to 
life that the creature would certainly die if the function 
were not performed. ‘That is the interesting point. 
Then, in criticising me, Prof. Mills accuses me of 
ignoring the “ effects of environment and of use.” On 
the contrary, these are just the facts which I appeal to. 
By adaptations to the environment and by use, the 
creature manages to keep alive; other creatures die 
off; so certain determinate directions of congenital 
variation are singled out and inherited. Thus phylo- 
genetic variations become determinate, just through 
