ng in a close flock at a great height.
Certain breeds of fowls have a taste for roosting in trees. The
different actions of pointers and setters might have been adduced in the
same class, as might the peculiar _manner_ of hunting of the spaniel.
Even in the same breed of dogs, namely in fox-hounds, it is the fixed
opinion of those best able to judge that the different pups are born
with different tendencies; some are best to find their fox in the cover;
some are apt to run straggling, some are best to make casts and to
recover the lost scent, &c.; and that these peculiarities undoubtedly
are transmitted to their progeny. Or again the tendency to point might
be adduced as a distinct habit which has become inherited,--as might the
tendency of a true sheep dog (as I have been assured is the case) to run
round the flock instead of directly at them, as is the case with other
young dogs when attempted to be taught. The "transandantes" sheep{274}
in Spain, which for some centuries have been yearly taken a journey of
several hundred miles from one province to another, know when the time
comes, and show the greatest restlessness (like migratory birds in
confinement), and are prevented with difficulty from starting by
themselves, which they sometimes do, and find their own way. There is a
case on good evidence{275} of a sheep which, when she lambed, would
return across a mountainous country to her own birth-place, although at
other times of year not of a rambling disposition. Her lambs inherited
this same disposition, and would go to produce their young on the farm
whence their parent came; and so troublesome was this habit that the
whole family was destroyed.

{274} <Note in original.> Several authors.

{275} In the margin "Hogg" occurs as authority for this fact. For
the reference, see p. 17, note 4.

These facts must lead to the conviction, justly wonderful as it is, that
almost infinitely numerous shades of disposition, of tastes, of peculiar
movements, and even of individual actions, can be modified or acquired
by one individual and transmitted to its offspring. One is forced to
admit that mental phenomena (no doubt through their intimate connection
with the brain) can be inherited, like infinitely numerous and fine
differences of corporeal structure. In the same manner as peculiarities
of corporeal structure slowly acquired or lost during mature life
(especially cognisant <?> in disease), as well as congeni