242 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 



judged there was danger in that part. It has several times 

 been observed that in a field of cattle, when one or two were 

 mischievous, and persisted long in annoying or tyrannizing 

 over the rest, the herd, to all appearance, consulted, and then, 

 making a united effort, drove the troublers off the ground. 

 The members of a rookery have also been observed to take 

 turns in supplying the needs of a family reduced to orphan- 

 hood. All of these are acts of reason, in no respect different 

 from similar acts of men. Moreover, although there is no 

 heritage of accumulated knowledge amongst the lower animals, 

 as there is amongst us, they are in some degree susceptible of 

 those modifications of natural character, and capable of those 

 accomplishments, which we call education. The taming and 

 domestication of animals, and the changes thus produced upon 

 their nature in the course of generations, are results identical 

 with civilization amongst ourselves ; and the quiet, servile 

 steer is probably as unlike the original wild cattle of this 

 country, as the English gentleman of the present day is 

 unlike the rude baron of the age of King John. Between a 

 young, unbroken horse, and a trained one, there is, again, all 

 the difference which exists between a wild youth reared at his 

 own discretion in the country, and the same person when he 

 has been toned down by long exposure to the influences of 

 refined city society. Of extensive combinations of thought 

 we have no reason to believe that any animals are capable 

 and yet most of us must feel the force of Walter Scott's 

 remark, that there was scarcely anything which he would not 

 believe of a dog. There is a curious result of education in 

 certain animals, namely, that habits to which they have been 

 trained, in some instances become hereditary. For example, 

 the accomplishment of pointing at game, although a pure 

 result of education, appears in the young pups brought up 

 apart from their parents and kind. The peculiar leap of the 

 Irish horse, acquired in the course of traversing a boggy 

 country, is continued in the progeny brought up in England. 

 This hereditariness of specific habits suggests a relation to 

 that form of psychological manifestation usually called in- 

 stinct ; but instinct is only another term for mind, or is mind 



