238 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 



ancestry through many generations had been employed in 

 finding Woodcocks were reared together as companions, the 

 Terrier not having been permitted to see a Polecat or any 

 other animal of similar character, and the Spaniel having 

 been prevented seeing a Woodcock or other kind of game. 

 The Terrier evinced, as soon as it perceived the scent of 

 the Polecat, very violent anger ; and as soon as it sgao the 

 Polecat attacked it with the same degree of fury as its 

 parents would have done. The young Spaniel, on the con- 

 trary, looked on with indifference, but it pursued the first 

 Woodcock it ever saw with joy and exultation, of which its 

 companion, the Terrier, did not in any degree partake. . . 

 In several instances young and wholly inexperienced dogs 

 appeared very nearly as expert in finding Woodcocks as their 

 experienced parents. 



"Woodcocks are driven in frosty weather, as is well 

 known, to seek their food in springs and rills of unfrozen 

 water, and I found that my old dogs knew about as well as I 

 did the degree of frost which would drive the woodcocks to 

 such places ; and this knov/ledge proved very troublesome to 

 me, for I could not sufficiently restrain them. I therefore left 

 the old experienced dogs at home, and took only the wholly 

 inexperienced young dogs ; but to my astonishment some of 

 them, in several instances, confined themselves as closely to 

 the unfrozen grounds as their parents would have done. 

 When I first observed this I suspected that woodcocks might 

 have been upon the unfrozen ground during the preceding 

 night, but I could not discover (as I think I should have 

 done had this been the case) any traces of their having been 

 there ; and as I could not do so, I was led to conclude that 

 the young dogs were guided by feelings and propensities 

 similar to those of their parents." 



Elsewhere in his essay this author remarks, " It may, I 

 think, be reasonably doubted whether any dog having the 

 habits and propensities of the Springing Spaniel would ever 

 have been known, if the art of shooting birds on the wing 

 had not been acquired." 



I Lastly, with reference to those artificial instincts of the 

 dog, which are of this highly specialized nature — amounting, 

 in fact, to hereditary memory of a most minute kind — I 

 may allude to a remark made by Professor Hermann, that 

 sporting dogs appear, when first taken out to hunt, and there- 



