5582 Reason and Instinct. 



If we desire to multiply instances of this kind, — and without ad- 

 verting to the multitudes of tricks and performances enacted, some of 

 them quaint, some clever, some almost startling, by pet dogs in almost 

 every village in the country, — we have but to go to the next per- 

 formance of some tolerably good equestrian troupe, and we shall see 

 quite sufficient to convince us that there is scarcely anything which 

 the horse may not be taught ; that he is capable of learning almost 

 anything which it may suit the whim of his trainer to teach him. 



Nor is this wonderful capacity for receiving and retaining the im- 

 pressions of teaching or training to be met with exclusively, or nearly 

 so, in animals not only themselves domesticated, but, in addition to 

 that, the descendants of generations of domesticated creatures, and so, 

 it may be said, prepared for the reception of such impressions; but it 

 is common in those of which it can scarcely be said that they are 

 reclaimed in the first degree. The whole science and practice of 

 falconry depended on the successful training of birds reared from the 

 nest and eggs of parents utterly wild. The same, too, of the young 

 otter taught to fish for its master; of the young seal instructed in the 

 same lesson, not an easy one to learn ; of the cheetah, or hunting- 

 leopard, of the East ; of the cormorant, systematically employed in 

 fishing by the Chinese, and, not systematically, by one here and there 

 nearer home ; and so on. Indeed, one might almost say there seems 

 to be no practical limit to the successful teaching or training of 

 animals ; for you do not seem to be at all necessitated to confine your- 

 self to the line apparently suggested, as promising most for success, 

 by the animal's natural habits or instincts. 



And here another consideration suggests itself rather forcibly to 

 our attention. The result of teaching or training an animal, or series « 

 of animals, in a continuous and systematical manner, induces a change 

 in the mind of the said animal or animals so great that new features 

 in the distinctive nature of that class or breed of animals assume 

 existence and become strikingly manifested. What is styled an here- 

 ditary instinct* is developed. This is met with in many different 

 animals, but most prominently in the dog. The wonderful and 

 peculiar sagacity of the sheep-dog, the distinctive characteristics of 

 the pointer and setter, to leave unmentioned the peculiarities of other 



* " Hereditary instincts may be formed, some animals transmitting to their 

 offspring acquired habits, and the psychical as well as the physical characters of races 

 undergoing variation through the agency of various causes on the breed." — Prichard, 

 p. 40. 



