INSTINCT AS INHERITED MEMORY. 209 



partridges or pheasants, in order that their mother may 

 take flight, of which she has lost the power. The musk 

 duck in its native country often perches and roosts on 

 trees, and our domesticated musk ducks, though slug- 

 gish birds, are fond of perching on the tops of barns, 

 walls, &c. . . . We know that the dog, however well and 

 regularly fed, often buries like the fox any superfluous 

 food ; we see him turning round and round on a carpet 

 as if to trample down grass to form a bed. ... In the 

 delight with which lambs and kids crowd together and 

 frisk upon the smallest hillock we see a vestige of their 

 former alpine habits." 



What does this delightful passage go to show, if not 

 that the young in all these cases must still have a latent 

 memory of their past existences, which is called into an 

 active condition as soon as the associated ideas present 

 themselves ? 



Keturning to M. Ribot's own observations, we find he 

 tells us that it usually requires three or four generations 

 to fix the results of training, and to prevent a return to 

 the instincts of the wild state. I think, however, it 

 would not be presumptuous to suppose that if an animal 

 after only three or four generations of training be re- 

 stored to its original conditions of life, it will forget its 

 intermediate training and return to its old ways, almost 

 as readily as a London street Arab would forget the 

 beneficial effects of a week's training in a reformatory 

 school, if he were then turned loose again on the streets. 

 So if we hatch wild ducks' eggs under a tame duck, the 

 ducklings " will have scarce left the egg-shell when 

 they obey the instincts of their race and take their 



