The Dying Huanaco. 319 



— it is not the only useless instinct we know of: 

 there are many others, both simple and complex ; 

 and of such instincts we believe, with good reason, 

 that they once played an important part in the life 

 of the species, and were only rendered useless by 

 changes in the condition of life, or in the organism, 

 or in both. In other words, when the special 

 conditions that gave them value no longer existed, 

 the correlated and perfect instinct was not, in these 

 cases, eradicated, but remained in abeyance and 

 still capable of being called into activity by a new 

 and false stimulus simulating the old and true. 

 Viewed in this way, the huanaco' s instinct might 

 be regarded as something remaining to the animal 

 from a remote past, not altogether unaffected by 

 time perhaps ; and like some ceremonial usage among 

 men that has long ceased to have any significance, 

 or like a fragment of ancient history, or a tradition, 

 which in the course of time has received some new 

 and false interpretation. The false interpretation, 

 to continue the metaphor, is, in this case, that the 

 purpose of the animal in going to a certain spot, to 

 which it has probably never previously resorted, is 

 to die there. A false interpretation, because, in 

 the first place, it is incredible that an instinct of no 

 advantage to the species in its struggle for existence 

 and predominance should arise and become per- 

 manent; and, in the second place, it is equally 

 incredible that it could ever have been to the 

 advantage of the species or race to have a dying 

 place. We must, then, suppose that there is in 

 the sensations preceding death, when death comes 

 slowly, some resemblance to the sensations experi- 



