SOCIAL HEREDITY 277 



the slightest instinctive fear or foreknowledge of 

 their approaching doom." 



The experiments were then conducted on a wider 

 scale, and Dr. Chalmers Mitchell continued : " More- 

 over, nearly every kind of mammal that we tried 

 was indifferent to snakes. Guinea-pigs and rats 

 would run over them ; a hyrax, which is both 

 intelligent and which from living in trees and on 

 rocks must often encounter snakes, was hardly even 

 interested. . . . Small carnivores, dogs, foxes, 

 and wolves, sheep, antelopes, and deer, zebras and 

 donkeys, were either quite indifferent or came up to 

 the bars and sniffed," and, on finding the snake was 

 not something to eat, " moved away with an air of 

 wearied disgust." Frogs, which form the natural 

 food of snakes in this country, showed not the 

 slightest trace of instinctive fear. The lower 

 monkeys also showed no general instinctive know- 

 ledge or fear of snakes. 



This is a most striking record from an observer 

 of the experience and standing of Dr. Chalmers 

 Mitchell. The large number and the representative 

 character of the species experimented with will be 

 noticed. The experiments as a whole give results 

 which are directly in the face of previous general 

 assumptions that is to say, in the representative 

 species of animals above mentioned there was found 



