I may perhaps deal with Mr. Romanes' recent work more fully in the sequel
to Life and Habit on which I am now engaged. For the present it is
enough to say that if he does not mean what Professor Hering and, _longo
intervallo_, myself do, he should not talk about habit or experience as
between successive generations, and that if he does mean what we do--which
I suppose he does--he should have said so much more clearly and
consistently than he has.
POSTSCRIPT.
This afternoon (March 7, 1884), the copies of this book being ready for
issue, I see Mr. Romanes' letter to the _Athenaeum_ of this day, and get
this postscript pasted into the book after binding.
Mr. Romanes corrects his reference to the passage in which he says that
Canon Kingsley first advanced the theory that instinct is inherited
memory ("M. E. in Animals," p. 296). Canon Kingsley's words are to be
found in _Fraser_, June, 1867, and are as follows:--
"Yon wood-wren has had enough to make him sad, if only he recollects
it, and if he can recollect his road from Morocco hither he maybe
recollects likewise what happened on the road: the long weary journey
up the Portuguese coast, and through the gap between the Pyrenees and
the Jaysquivel, and up the Landes of Bordeaux, and through Brittany,
flitting by night and hiding and feeding as he could by day; and how
his mates flew against the lighthouses and were killed by hundreds,
and how he essayed the British Channel and was blown back, shrivelled
up by bitter blasts; and how he felt, nevertheless, that 'that was
water he must cross,' he knew not why; but something told him that his
mother had done it before him, and he was flesh of her flesh, life of
her life, and had inherited her instinct (as we call hereditary memory
in order to avoid the trouble of finding out what it is and how it
comes).
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