180 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXV. No. 631 



flock-mind, exploding instantly in the impulse of 

 flight. 



Danger! flashes the flock-mind, and in danger 

 the indispensable thing is to run, not to wait 

 until the leader snifi's the tainted wind and 

 signals it; not for each and singly to put the 

 occasion to the proof; but to run — of this the 

 flock-mind apprizes — and to keep on running until 

 the impulse dies faintly as water-rings on the 

 surface of a mantling pond. In the wild pastures 

 flight is the only succor, and since to cry out is 

 to interfere with that business and draw on the 

 calamity, a flock in extremity never cries out. 



Consider, then, the inadequacy of the flock- 

 mind. A hand-fed leader may learn to call the 

 herder vociferously, a cosset lamb in trouble comes 

 blatting to his heels, but the flock has no voice 

 other than the deep-mouthed pealings hung about 

 the leader's neck. In all that darkling lapse of 

 time since herders began to sleep with their 

 weapons, aff'ording a protection that the flock- 

 mind never learns to invite, they have found no 

 better trick than to be still and run foolishly. 

 For the flock-mind moves only in the direction of 

 the original intention. When at shearings or 

 markings they run the yearlings through a gate 

 for counting, the rate of going accelerates until 

 the sheep pass too rapidly for numbering. Then 

 the shepherd thrusts his staff across the opening, 

 forcing the next sheep to jump, and the next, and 

 the next, until, Jump! says the flock-mind. Then 

 he withdraws the staff', and the sheep go on jump- 

 ing until the impulse dies as the dying peal of the 

 bells. 



Have sheep inherited acquired characters of 

 habit or increased in this way their mental 

 equipment? Not according to what has just 

 been written. But consider this: 



I do not know very well what to make of that 

 trait of lost sheep to seek rock shelter at the 

 base of cliffs, for it suits with no characteristic 

 of his wild brethren. But if an estray in his 

 persistent journey up toward the high places 

 arrives at the foot of a tall precipice, there he 

 stays, seeking not to go around it, feeding out 

 perhaps and returning to it, but if frightened 

 by prowlers, huddling there to starve. Could it 

 be the survival, not of a wild instinct — it is too 

 foolish to have been that — but of the cave-dwell- 

 ing time when man protected him in his stone 

 shelters or in pens built against the base of a 

 cliff, as we see the herder yet for greater con- 

 venience build rude corrals of piled boulders at 

 the foot of an overhanging or insurmountable 



rocky wall? It is yet to be shown how long man 

 halted in the period of stone dwelling and the 

 sheep with him; but if it be assented that we 

 have brought some traces of that life forward 

 with us, might not also the sheep? 



But, from the other side, consider this : 

 Where the wild strain most persists is in the 

 bedding habits of the flock. Still they take for 

 choice, the brow of a rising hill, turning out- 

 ward toward the largest view; and never have I 

 seen the flock all lie down at one time. Always 

 as if by prearrangement some will stand, and 

 upon their surrendering the watch others will rise 

 in their places headed to sniff the tainted wind 

 and scan the rim of the world. Like a thing 

 palpable one sees the racial obligation pass 

 through the bedded flock; as the tired watcher 

 folds his knees under him and lies down, it 

 passes like a sigh. By some mysterious selection, 

 it leaves a hundred ruminating in quietude and 

 troubles the appointed one. One sees in the 

 shaking of his sides a hint of struggle against the 

 hereditary and so unnecessary instinct, but sigh- 

 ing he gets upon his feet. By noon or night the 

 flock instinct never sleeps. Waking and falling 

 asleep, waking and spying on the flock, no chance 

 discovers the watchers failing, even though they 

 doze upon their feet; and by nothing so much 

 is the want of interrelation of the herder and the 

 flock betrayed, for watching is the trained accom- 

 plishment of dogs. 



Our ' amelioration ' of the sheep has cer- 

 tainly lost them much — even though we have 

 gained. This is, of course, the familiar story 

 of artificial selection. It is chiefly artificial 

 degradation. Mrs. Austin records this : 



Of the native instincts for finding water and 

 knowing when food is good for them herded 

 goats have retained much, but sheep not a whit. 

 In the open San Joaquin, said a good shepherd of 

 that country, when the wind blew off the broad 

 lake, his sheep, being thirsty, would break and 

 run as much as a mile or two in that direction; 

 but it seems that the alkaline dust of the desert 

 range must have diminished the keenness of smell, 

 for Sanger told me how, on his long drive, when 

 his sheep had come forty miles without drink and 

 were then so near a water-hole that the horses 

 scented it and pricked up their ears, the flock 

 became immanageable from thirst and broke back 

 to the place where they had last drunk. 



And this: 



Sheep will die rather than drink water wliich 

 does not please them, and die drinking water with 



