tal peculiarities,
are transmitted; so it appears to be with the mind. The inherited paces
in the horse have no doubt been acquired by compulsion during the lives
of the parents: and temper and tameness may be modified in a breed by
the treatment which the individuals receive. Knowing that a pig has been
taught to point, one would suppose that this quality in pointer-dogs was
the simple result of habit, but some facts, with respect to the
occasional appearance of a similar quality in other dogs, would make one
suspect that it originally appeared in a less perfect degree, "_by
chance_," that is from a congenital tendency{276} in the parent of the
breed of pointers. One cannot believe that the tumbling, and high flight
in a compact body, of one breed of pigeons has been taught; and in the
case of the slight differences in the manner of hunting in young
fox-hounds, they are doubtless congenital. The inheritance of the
foregoing and similar mental phenomena ought perhaps to create less
surprise, from the reflection that in no case do individual acts of
reasoning, or movements, or other phenomena connected with
consciousness, appear to be transmitted. An action, even a very
complicated one, when from long practice it is performed unconsciously
without any effort (and indeed in the case of many peculiarities of
manners opposed to the will) is said, according to a common expression,
to be performed "instinctively." Those cases of languages, and of songs,
learnt in early childhood and _quite_ forgotten, being _perfectly_
repeated during the unconsciousness of illness, appear to me only a few
degrees less wonderful than if they had been transmitted to a second
generation{277}.

{276} In the _Origin_, Ed. i., he speaks more decidedly against the
belief that instincts are hereditary habits, see for instance pp.
209, 214, Ed. vi. pp. 321, 327. He allows, however, something to
habit (p. 216).

{277} A suggestion of Hering's and S. Butler's views on memory and
inheritance. It is not, however, implied that Darwin was inclined
to accept these opinions.

_Hereditary habits compared with instincts._

The chief characteristics of true instincts appear to be their
invariability and non-improvement during the mature age of the
individual animal: the absence of knowledge of the end, for which the
action is performed, being associated, however, sometimes with a degree
of reason; being subject to mista