360 ON THE HEREDITARY INSTINCTIVE PROPENSITIES OF ANIMALS. 



The subjects of my observation in these cases were all the offspring of 

 well-instructed parents, of five or six years old or more ; and I thought 

 it not improbable that instinctive hereditary propensities might be 

 stronger in these than in the offspring of very young and inexperienced 

 parents. Experience proved this opinion to be well founded, and led me 

 to believe that these propensities might be made to cease to exist, and 

 others be given ; and that the same breed of dogs which displayed so 

 strongly an hereditary disposition to hunt after woodcocks might be 

 made ultimately to display a similar propensity to hunt after truffles ; 

 and it may, I think, be reasonably doubted whether any dog, having the 

 habits and propensities of the springing spaniel, would ever have been 

 known if the art of shooting birds on wing had not been acquired. 



I possess one young spaniel of which the male parent, apparently a well- 

 bred springing spaniel, had been taught to do a great number of very extra- 

 ordinary tricks (some of which I previously thought it impossible that a 

 dog could be made to learn), and of which the female parent was a well- 

 taught springing spaniel ; and the puppy had been taught before it came 

 into my possession a part of the accomplishments of its male parent. 

 This animal possessed a very singular degree of acuteness and cunning, 

 and in some cases appeared to be guided by something more nearly allied 

 to reason than I have ever witnessed in any of the inferior animals. In 

 one instance I had walked out with my gun and a servant, without any 

 dog, and having seen a woodcock, I sent for the dog above mentioned, 

 which the servant brought to me. A month afterwards I sent my servant 

 for it again, under similar circumstances, when it acted as if it had inferred 

 that the track by which the servant had come from me would lead it to 

 me. It left my servant within twenty yards of my house, and was with 

 me in a very few minutes, though the distance which it had to run 

 exceeded a mile. I repeated this experiment at different times, and 

 after considerable intervals, and uniformly with the same results the 

 dog always coming to me without the servant. I could mention several 

 other instances nearly as singular of the sagacity of this animal, which 

 I imagined to have derived its extraordinary powers, in some degree, 

 from the highly-cultivated intellect of its male parent. 



I have witnessed within the period above mentioned, of nearly sixty 

 years, a very great change in the habits of the woodcock. In the first 

 part of that time, when it had recently arrived in the autumn, it was very 

 tame j it usually chuckled when disturbed, and took only a very short 

 flight. It is now, and has been during many years, comparatively a very 



