The Dying Huanaco. 323 



further, that these were seasons of suffering to the 

 animal — the suffering, or discomfort and danger, 

 having in the first place given rise to the habit. 

 Assuming again that the habit had existed so long 

 as to become, like that of the reptile, a fixed, immu- 

 table instinct, a hereditary knowledge, so that the 

 young huanacos, untaught by the adults, would go 

 alone and unerringly -to the meeting-place from any 

 distance, it is but an easy step to the belief, that 

 after the conditions had changed, and the refuges 

 were no longer needed, this instinctive knowledge 

 would still exist in them, and that they would take 

 the old road when stimulated by the pain of a 

 wound ; or the miserable sensations experienced in 

 disease ; or during the decay of the life-energy, when 

 the senses grow dim, and the breath fails, and the 

 blood is thin and cold. 



I presume that most persons who have observed 

 animals a great deal have met with cases in which 

 the animal has acted automaticallyj or instinctively, 

 when the stimulus has been a false one. I will 

 relate one such case, observed by myself, and which 

 strikes me as being apposite to the question I am 

 considering. It must be premised that' this is an 

 instance of an acquired habit ; but this does not 

 affect my argument, since I have all along assumed 

 that the huanaco — a highly sagacious species in the 

 highest class of vertebrates — first acquired a habit 

 from experience of seeking a remembered refuge, 

 and that such habit was the parent, as it were; or 

 the first clay model, of the perfect and indestructible 

 instinct that was to be. 



It is not an uncommon thing in the Argentine 



Y 2 



