ON THE HEREDITARY INSTINCTIVE PROPENSITIES OF ANIMALS. 359 



I had at that period made a great many analogous experiments, and I 

 have subsequently made a considerable number, chiefly upon one variety 

 of dog, namely, that which is generally used in search of woodcocks, and 

 is usually called the springing spaniel. These experiments were com- 

 menced nearly sixty years ago, and occupied a good deal of my attention 

 during more than twenty years, and to a less extent nearly to the present 

 time ; and as it does not appear to me probable that any person is now 

 likely to investigate this subject as laboriously, or through so long a 

 period, I have been induced to believe that the facts which I am prepared 

 to communicate may be thought to deserve to be recorded in the Trans- 

 actions of this Society. 



At the period in which my experiments commenced, well-bred and 

 well-taught springing spaniels were abundant, and I readily obtained 

 possession of as many as I wanted. I had at first no other object in view 

 than that of obtaining dogs of great excellence ; but within a very short 

 time some facts came under my observation which very strongly arrested 

 my attention. In several instances young and wholly inexperienced dogs 

 appeared very nearly as expert in finding woodcocks as their experienced 

 parents. The woods in which I was accustomed to shoot did not contain 

 pheasants, nor much game of any other kind, and I therefore resolved 

 never to shoot at anything except woodcocks, conceiving that by so doing 

 the hereditary propensities above mentioned would become more obvious 

 and decided in the young and untaught animals ; and I had the satis- 

 faction, in more than one instance, to see some of those find as many 

 woodcocks, and give tongue as correctly, as the best of my older dogs. 



Woodcocks are driven in frosty weather, as is well known, to seek their 

 food in springs and rills of unfrozen water, and I found that my old dogs 

 knew about as well as I did the degree of frost which would drive the 

 woodcocks to such places ; and this knowledge proved very troublesome 

 to me, for I could not sufficiently restrain them. I therefore left the old 

 experienced dogs at home, and took only the wholly inexperienced young 

 dogs; but, to my astonishment, some of these, in several instances, 

 confined themselves as closely to the unfrozen grounds as their parents 

 would have done. When I first observed this, I suspected that wood- 

 cocks might have been upon the unfrozen ground during the preceding 

 night, but I could not discover (as I think I should have done had this 

 been the case) any traces of their having been there ; and as I could not 

 do so, I was led to conclude that the young dogs were guided by feelings 

 and propensities similar to those of their parents. 



