INSTINCT 213 



can no more know that he points to aid his master, than the white 

 butterfly knows why she lays her eggs on the leaf of the cabbage 

 — I cannot see that these actions differ essentially from true in- 

 stincts. If we were to behold one kind of wolf, when young and 

 without any training, as soon as it scented its prey, stand motion- 

 less like a statue, and then slowly crawl forward with a peculiar 

 gait; and another kind of wolf rushing round, instead of at, a herd 

 of deer, and driving them to a distant point, we should assuredly 

 call these actions instinctive. Domestic instincts, as they may be 

 called, are certainly far less fixed than natural instincts; but they 

 have been acted on by far less rigorous selections, and have been 

 transmitted for an incomparably shorter period, under less fixed 

 conditions of life. 



How strongly these domestic instincts, habits, and dispositions 

 are inherited, and how curiously they become mingled, is well 

 shown when different breeds of dogs are crossed. Thus it is known 

 that a cross with a bull-dog has affected for many generations the 

 courage and obstinacy of greyhounds; and a cross with a grey- 

 hound has given to a whole family of shepherd-dogs a tendency to 

 hunt hares. These domestic instincts, when thus tested by crossing, 

 resemble natural instincts, which in a like manner become curi- 

 ously blended together, and for a long period exhibit traces of the 

 instincts of either parent: for example, Le Roy describes a dog, 

 whose great-grandfather was a wolf, and this dog showed a trace 

 of its wild parentage only in one way, by not coming in a straight 

 line to his master when called. 



Domestic instincts are sometimes spoken of as actions which 

 have become inherited solely from long-continued and compulsory 

 habit; but this is not true. No one would ever have thought of 

 teaching, or probably could have taught, the tumbler-pigeon to 

 tumble — an action which, as I have witnessed, is performed by 

 young birds that have never seen a pigeon tumble. We may believe 

 that some one pigeon showed a slight tendency to this strange 

 habit, and that the long-continued selection of the best individuals 

 in successive generations made tumblers what they now are; and 

 near Glasgow there are house-tumblers, as I hear from Mr. Brent, 

 which cannot fly eighteen inches high without going head over 

 heels. It may be doubted whether any one would have thought of 

 training a dog to point, had not some one dog naturally shown a 

 tendency in this line; and this is known occasionally to happen, as 

 I once saw, in a pure terrier: the act of pointing is probably, as 

 many have thought, only the exaggerated pause of an animal pre- 

 paring to spring on its prey. When the first tendency to point was 



