" Hereditary Tricks." 0073 



" On Hereditary Tricks in Animals" 

 By the Rev. Alfred Charles Smith, M.A. 



That in every tribe of animals a fine progeny may be expected to 

 spring from a good stock, is a fact which none will deny : indeed, 

 that acute observer of nature, Aristotle, was wont to assert, ages ago, 

 " 'E| ayaQcov ayaOdi ; " and Horace, too, sang, as every school-boy 

 knows, 



" Fortes creantur forlibus et bonis : 

 Est in juvencis, est in equis paternus virtus." 



This is all plain enough, and we can easily understand it. Nor do I 

 find much difficulty in perceiving how bodily peculiarities may be- 

 come hereditary, even when such peculiarities are not natural, but the 

 result of the interference of man. Thus it is notorious that from the 

 long-practised habit of cutting off the tails of sheep-dogs (or, rather, 

 of biting them off, which I believe is the detestable method of per- 

 forming that operation generally in vogue) there is now a race of tail- 

 less sheep-dogs, which come into the world without any caudal 

 appendage whatever, or at any rate with tails so little developed as to 

 be generally considered wanting. And Mr. Waterton, in his second 

 volume of ' Essays' (page 161), speaking of the strange custom which 

 prevailed in this country not very many years ago, of removing the 

 whole of the tail of horses, says, "You would have thought that Dame 

 Nature herself has ' taken sinittle,' as we say in Yorkshire, for I knew 

 a farmer's mare in the county of Durham, about the year 1794, that 

 produced three foals successively without any tails at all." So far 

 we see how Nature, accommodating herself to existing circumstances, 

 endeavours to produce in the offspring a facsimile of the parent; and 

 this comes under our notice so often with respect to bodily defects 

 and blemishes, as well in the human race as in other branches of the 

 animal kingdom, that it causes no surprise, and we have learned in a 

 manner to expect it. But when we pass from bodily to mental pecu- 

 liarities, if I may so call them, and note the tricks and individual 

 habits which are likewise sometimes hereditary and transmitted from 

 generation to generation, the question assumes a very different aspect, 

 and appears to me extremely remarkable, and well deserving of inves- 

 tigation ; for neither Aristotle nor Horace, nor any one else, as far as I 

 know, has attempted to explain to us the cause and origin of these 

 strange tricks which are practised in certain families, and, like the 

 gout and madness in the human race, seem to descend from father to 

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