226 THE WONDER OF LIFE 



enough that these inborn antipathies of higher Vertebrates 

 are ingrained at a higher level of the brain than instincts 

 are. 



An exceedingly interesting inquiry has been well begun 

 by Dr. Louis Eobinson in his Wild Traits in Tame Animals 

 (1897) — an inquiry into those modes of behaviour which 

 seem to be survivals of the original wild life. It was in 

 the pack that the dog organically learned to signal by its 

 tail, to guard its bone, to obey orders, to watch, and so on. 

 As Darwin suggested, the turning round and round on 

 the hearthrug may be connected with the primitive roving 

 of the pack, which moved from place to place and found 

 temporary resting-places for the night among the long grass. 

 The crime of sheep-worrying is a recrudescence of old ways. 

 Shying in horses may be in part a relic of a valuable ances- 

 tral instinct to swerve suddenly from suspicious movements 

 of snake or wild boar or crouching tiger among the bushes 

 and reeds. Wild foals run with their mothers, and unto 

 this day they do not gorge themselves with milk, as calves 

 do. Scotch cattle, taken to a large American ranch, hid 

 their calves among the thick herbage, true to the old ways, 

 for the wild cows hide their young in the thickets while 

 they go to graze in the open. The angry ewe still stamps 

 her foot — the old signalling of danger on the mountain 

 side. We laugh at the sheep as they go in file and jump 

 in succession over an imaginary obstacle simply because 

 one of them did it by mistake, but they are acting in 

 accordance with one of their oldest and most useful instincts. 

 The pigs squeal now because their wild ancestors squealed 

 to summon their neighbours to help them against a bear ; 

 they grunt now because it was by grunting that their 

 ancestors kept together in the jungle or among the high 



