172 DARWINIA.NA. 



of about as carefully and skillfully as the unplumed 

 biped does an eccaleobion. 1 



As to the real intelligence of the higher brutes, it 

 has been ably defended by a far more competent ob- 

 server, Mr. Agassiz, to whose conclusions we yield a 

 general assent, although we cannot quite place the best 

 of dogs " in that respect upon a level with a consider- 

 able proportion of poor humanity," nor indulge the 

 hope, or indeed the desire, of a renewed acquaintance 

 with the whole animal kingdom in a future life.* 



The assertion that acquired habitudes or instincts, 

 and acquired structures, are not heritable, any breeder 

 or good observer can refute. 8 



That " the human mind has become what it is out 

 of a developed instinct," 4 is a statement which Mr. 

 Darwin nowhere makes, and, we presume, would not 

 accept. 5 That he would have us believe that individ- 



1 Vide Edinburgh Review for January, 1860, article on "Acclima- 

 tization," etc. 



a " Contributions, Essay on Classification," etc., vol. 5., pp. 60-66. 



3 Still stronger assertions have recently been hazarded even that 

 heritability is of species only, not of individual characteristics 

 strangely overlooking the fundamental peculiarity of plants and ani- 

 mals, which is that they reproduce, and that the species is continued as 

 such only because individuals reproduce their like. 



It has also been urged that variation is never cumulative. If this 

 means that varieties are not capable of further variation, it is not borne 

 out by observation. For cultivators and breeders well know that the 

 main difficulty is to initiate a variation, and that new varieties are par- 

 ticularly prone to vary more. 



4 North American Review, April, 1860, p. 475. 



6 No doubt he would equally distinguish in kind between instinct 

 (which physiologically is best conceived of as congenital habit, so that 

 habits when inherited become instincts, just as varieties become fixed 



