154 ALFEED T. SCHOFIELD^ ESQ.^ M,D., M.K.C.S.^ ETC., ON 



is as happy and liealtliy as a farm labourer in the Midlands. 

 Each has become adapted to his environment by habit. Let 

 them change places, and the chances are both will die. 

 Sir Charles Lyell tells ns of some English greyhounds 

 exported to South America for coursing hares on a raised 

 plateau some 6,000 feet high. They were useless on account 

 of the unaccustomed rarity of the air, but they produced 

 pups who could course as well as the dogs of the country 

 from a formed habit. Some habits are the offspring of neces- 

 sity, others of caprice. 



Draivhacks of habit. — But there is another side to habit 

 that must be alluded to in conclusion, and that is its draw- 

 backs. An illustration will explain this. In suburban 

 dwellings, with a garden and locked gate in front, there is 

 often an arrangement by which the gate can be opened from 

 the house by pulling a handle that raises the gate latch. 

 When the gate bell rings in the hall it is equivalent to a 

 sensation reaching a conscious brain. The maid then 

 comes and looks out to see who is there before she pulls the 

 handle. If it is a person she wishes to admit, she pulls the 

 handle which lifts up the gate latch. The maid is the 

 mind which considers the impulse received by the brain, and 

 does not send a motor impulse until the will determines 

 whait shall be done. This is a type of a pure voluntary 

 acticui. 



If, however, to save herself trouble, the girl fastens the 

 wire that should ring the bell round a pulley in the hall to 

 the wire that opens the gate, the result will be that when a 

 man pulls the bell handle, he rings no bell but opens the 

 gate by a reflex action. This is the formation of an arti- 

 ticial reflex, only it cannot be thus made at once by the will 

 but must be gradually formed by frequent repetition. 

 The advantages of the voluntary action were — the maid 

 could admit whom she pleased, and none could enter 

 without her knowledge and consent. The drawbacks were — 

 it took her nearly ail her time to answer the bell, and the 

 man had always to wait for a time at the gate. 



When the action is changed into a reflex one, the advan- 

 tage is that the man is never kept waiting, for pulling the 

 wire opens the gate, and the servant never has to answer 

 the bell. The disadvantage is she no longer knoAvs or can 

 control who enters the garden. Habits thus may become our 

 masters. There is a story of a lady engaged to play at a 

 concert who took too much at supper, and the result was she 



