* * * * *
I cannot refrain from bringing forward a few more instances of what I
think must be considered by every reader as hereditary memory. Sydney
Smith writes:--
"Sir James Hall hatched some chickens in an oven. Within a few minutes
after the shell was broken, a spider was turned loose before this very
youthful brood; the destroyer of flies had hardly proceeded more than a
few inches, before he was descried by one of these oven-born chickens,
and, at one peck of his bill, immediately devoured. This certainly was
not imitation. A female goat very near delivery died; Galen cut out the
young kid, and placed before it a bundle of hay, a bunch of fruit, and a
pan of milk; the young kid smelt to them all very attentively, and then
began to lap the milk. This was not imitation. And what is commonly and
rightly called instinct, cannot be explained away under the notion of its
being imitation." (Lecture xvii. on Moral Philosophy.)
It cannot, indeed, be explained away under the notion of its being
imitation, but I think it may well be so under that of its being memory.
Again, a little further on in the same lecture as that above quoted from,
we find:--
"Ants and beavers lay up magazines. Where do they get their knowledge
that it will not be so easy to collect food in rainy weather as it is in
summer? Men and women know these things, because their grandpapas and
grandmammas have told them so.
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