EDUCABILITY OF ANIMALS. 
481 
conceiving that, by so doing, the hereditary propensities above- 
mentioned would become more obvious and decided in the young 
and untaught animals ; and I had the satisfaction, in more than 
one instance, to see some of these find as many woodcocks, and 
give tongue as correctly, as the best of my older dogs. 
Woodcocks are driven in frosty weather, as is well known, to 
seek their food in springs and rills of unfrozen water, and I found 
that my old dogs knew as well as I did the degree of frost which 
would drive the woodcocks to such places; and this knowledge 
proved very troublesome to me, for I could not sufficiently re- 
strain them. I therefore left the old experienced dogs at home, 
and took only the wholly inexperienced young dogs ; but, to my 
astonishment, some of these, in several instances, confined them- 
selves as closely to the unfrozen grounds as their parents would 
have done. When I first observed this, I suspected that wood- 
cocks might have been upon the unfrozen ground during the 
preceding night ; but I could not discover (which I think I 
should have done had this been the case) any traces of their hav- 
ing been there ; and as I could not do so, 1 was led to conclude 
that the young dogs were guided by feelings and propensities 
similar to those of their parents. 
The subjects of my observation in these cases were all the off- 
spring of well-instructed parents, of five or six years old or more ; 
and I thought it not improbable that instinctive hereditary pro- 
pensities might be stronger in these than in the offspring of very 
young and inexperienced parents. Experience proved this opi- 
nion to be well founded, and led me to believe that these propen- 
sities might be made to cease to exist, and others to be given; 
and that the same breed of dogs which displayed so strongly an 
hereditary disposition to hunt after woodcocks, might be made 
ultimately to display a similar propensity to hunt after truffles; 
and it may, I think, be reasonably doubted whether any dog hav- 
ing the habits and propensities of the springing spaniel would 
ever have been known, if the art of shooting birds on the wing 
had. not been acquired. 
I possessed one young spaniel, of which the male parent, ap- 
parently a well* bred springing spaniel, had been taught to do a 
great number of extraordinary tricks, and of which the female 
parent was a well-bred springing spaniel : the puppy had been 
taught, before it came into my possession, a part of the accom- 
plishments of its male parent. In one instance I had walked 
out with my gun and a servant, without any dog ; and having 
seen a woodcock, I sent for the dog abovementioned, which the 
servant brought to me. A month afterwards, I sent my servant 
for it again, under similar circumstances, when it acted as if it 
had inferred that the track by which the servant had come from 
