444 Animal Life and Intelligence. 



trains. Here elimination is practically excluded ; but it 

 has to be proved that this fearlessness is truly instinctive. 

 Professor Eimer says,* "In my^ garden every sparrow and 

 every crow know me from afar because I persecute these 

 birds. Once, in the presence of a friend, I shot a crow 

 from the roof of my house, while the pigeons and starlings 

 on the same roof, to the great astonishment of my friend, 

 to whom I had predicted it, remained perfectly quiet. 

 They had learned by frequent experience at what my gun 

 was aimed, and knew that it did not threaten them." 

 There is nothing in this 'interesting observation, however, 

 to show that what the pigeons had learnt had, by inherited 

 experience, become instinctive. And Professor Weismann 

 will not, in all probability, be prepared to accept as a 

 logical inference " that this instinct of fear, because it can 

 be dispelled by experience, must be founded on inherited, 

 acquired experience." f 



Fully admitting, then, that this is a matter of relative 

 probability, and that the observations and inferences in 

 this matter are not by themselves convincing, I still think 

 that the balance of probability is here on" the side of some 

 inheritance of experience. Take next such an instinctive 

 habit as that which dogs display of turning round in a 

 narrow circle ere they lie down. In its origin the instinct 

 probably arose with the object of preparing a couch in the 

 long grass. Now, is this habit of elimination value ? Can 

 we suppose that it arose through the elimination of those 

 ancestral animals which failed to perform this habit ? I 

 find it difficult to accept this view, though it is just possible 

 that the animals which did this thereby escaped the 

 observation of their enemies. It is also possible that this 

 originally was a merely purposeless habit, a strange trick 

 of manner, which has been inherited, and rendered constant 

 and fixed. Here again, however, I think the balance of 

 probability is that the habit was intelligently acquired and 

 inherited. 



I have before drawn attention to the more or less in- 



* " Organic Evolution," p. 227. t Ibid. p. 228. 



