This is quite as it should be. Genius will occasionally rise a little above convention, but with an old convention immutability will be the rule. “Such,” continues M. Ribot, “are the admitted characters of instinct.” Yes; but are they not also the admitted characters of actions that are due to memory? At the bottom of p. 15, M. Ribot quotes the following from Mr. Darwin:— “We have reason to believe that aboriginal habits are long retained under domestication. Thus with the common ass, we see signs of its original desert-life in its strong dislike to cross the smallest stream of water, and in its pleasure in rolling in the dust. The same strong dislike to cross a stream is common to the camel which has been domesticated from a very early period. Young pigs, though so tame, sometimes squat when frightened, and then try to conceal themselves, even in an open and bare place. Young turkeys, and occasionally even young fowls, when the hen gives the danger-cry, run away and try to hide themselves, like young partridges or pheasants, in order that their mother may take flight, of which she has lost the power. The musk duck in its native country often perches and roosts on trees, and our domesticated musk ducks, though sluggish birds, are fond of perching on the tops of barns, walls, &c. . . . We know that the dog, however well and regularly fed, often buries like the fox any superfluous food; we see him turning round and round on a carpet as if to trample down grass to form a bed. . . . In the delight with which lambs and kids crowd together and frisk upon the smallest hillock we see a vestige of their former alpine habits.” What does this delightful passage go to show, if not that the young in all these cases must still have a latent memory of their past existences, which is called into an active condition as soon as the associated ideas present themselves? Returning to M. Ribot’s own observations, we find he tells us that it usually requires three or four generations to fix the results of training, and to prevent a return to the instincts of the wild state. I think, however, it would not be presumptuous to suppose that if an animal after only three or four generations of training be restored to its original conditions of life, it will forget its intermediate training and return to its old ways, almost as readily as a London street Arab would forget the beneficial effects of a weeks training in a reformatory school, if he were then turned loose again on the streets. So if we hatch wild ducks’ eggs under a tame duck, the ducklings “will have scarce left the egg-shell when they obey the instincts of their race and take their flight.” So the colts from wild horses, and mongrel young between wild and domesticated horses, betray traces of their earlier memories.