292 Habit and Instinct. 



in favour of his view; for were the acquired habit in- 

 herited in the degree claimed by the transmissionist, there 

 should not be so much variation. But in any case it is 

 obvious that such a habit as pointing cannot be adduced 

 in evidence of transmission as against the hypothesis of 

 selection, since selection is undoubtedly by no means 

 excluded. 



In face of these alternative difficulties, that on the one 

 hand of proving the truly congenital nature of a habit 

 affirmed to be the result of transmission, and that on the 

 other hand of excluding the influence of all forms of 

 selection, it is by no means easy at present to decide, by 

 direct appeal to observed fact, between the rival hypotheses. 

 Perhaps one of the strongest cases, if trustworthy, in 

 favour of the occasional transmission of an acquired habit 

 is that of begging. Mr. Hurt describes in Nature * how a 

 skye terrier was taught with difficulty to beg. " One of 

 his daughters, who has never seen her father, is in the 

 constant habit of sitting up, although she has never been 

 taught to do so, and has not seen others sit up." And Mr. 

 Lawson Tait informed Eomanes that " he had a cat which 

 was taught to beg for food like a terrier, so that she 

 developed the habit of assuming this posture so very 

 unusual in a cat whenever she desired to be fed. All 

 her kittens adopted the same habit under circumstances 

 which precluded the possibility of imitation, for they were 

 given away to friends very early in life, and greatly sur- 

 prised their new owners when, several weeks afterwards, 

 they began spontaneously to beg." "Very early in life" 

 is somewhat indefinite; and one may ask whether all 

 possibility of imitation was actually precluded. One 

 peculiarity about such cases is their sporadic and occa- 

 sional character. Of the thousands of individual dogs 



* Aug. 1st, 1872; quoted in " Mental Evolution in Animals," p, 195 





