kes and being associated with certain
states of the body or times of the year or day. In most of these
respects there is a resemblance in the above detailed cases of the
mental qualities acquired or modified during domestication. No doubt the
instincts of wild animals are more uniform than those habits or
qualities modified or recently acquired under domestication, in the same
manner and from the same causes that the corporeal structure in this
state is less uniform than in beings in their natural conditions. I have
seen a young pointer point as fixedly, the first day it was taken out,
as any old dog; Magendie says this was the case with a retriever which
he himself reared: the tumbling of pigeons is not probably improved by
age: we have seen that in the case above given that the young sheep
inherited the migratory tendency to their particular birth-place the
first time they lambed. This last fact offers an instance of a domestic
instinct being associated with a state of body; as do the
"transandantes" sheep with a time of year. Ordinarily the acquired
instincts of domestic animals seem to require a certain degree of
education (as generally in pointers and retrievers) to be perfectly
developed: perhaps this holds good amongst wild animals in rather a
greater degree than is generally supposed; for instance, in the singing
of birds, and in the knowledge of proper herbs in Ruminants. It seems
pretty clear that bees transmit knowledge from generation to generation.
Lord Brougham{278} insists strongly on ignorance of the end proposed
being eminently characteristic of true instincts; and this appears to me
to apply to many acquired hereditary habits; for instance, in the case
of the young pointer alluded to before, which pointed so steadfastly the
first day that we were obliged several times to carry him away{279}.
This puppy not only pointed at sheep, at large white stones, and at
every little bird, but likewise "backed" the other pointers: this young
dog must have been as unconscious for what end he was pointing, namely
to facilitate his master's killing game to eat, as is a butterfly which
lays her eggs on a cabbage, that her caterpillars would eat the leaves.
So a horse that ambles instinctively, manifestly is ignorant that he
performs that peculiar pace for the ease of man; and if man had never
existed, he would never have ambled. The young pointer pointing at white
stones appears to be as much a mistake of its acquired in