INSTINCT VERSUS REASON. 55 
which the Almighty alone can describe, in which none 
can tell where instinct ends and reason begins), they 
nay have advanced and cultivated their instinctive 
reasoning powers to such an extent that they are 
now able to cope, and to protect themselves more suc- 
cessfully against all the innovations of destruction? 
Does not the hereditary law plainly show, to an ex- 
pert, the slightest mule strain lurking in the progeny 
of a mare whose dam or grandam had foaled a 
mule? Does not the breeder of horses, cattle, hogs, 
dogs, or what not, endeavor with painstaking efforts 
to obtain the strain he desires for speed, nose, color, 
style, cleanness of limb, etc., as pure and as nearly 
perfect as possible, because the attributes of bygone 
strains are reproduced in coming generations? 
Conversely, if migratory birds by their innate in- 
stinctive propensities return year after year to favo- 
rite haunts, and nest in the same places, if found in 
former conditions, should not the ducks, by virtue of 
instinct, reason, intelligence or sagacity, call it what 
you will, grow wiser and more cautious from the con- 
tinual harassing they have endured for so many years, 
and by that great law of inheritance imbue in their 
oftspring those traits and characters which are so often 
seen depicted in generations of men and domestic ani- 
mals? 
That ducks can talk and convey to each other warn- 
ings and greetings is a well established fact, and nu- 
merous are the accounts in which a bird beset by 
danger by its cries will summon others of its species 
to its assistance. If geese, rooks and wood pigeons, oi 
their own sagacity, post sentinels on the highest peaks 
of some observatory points, which allow them to see 
