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 congenital peculiarities, are transmitted; so it appears to be with the mind. The inherited paces in the horse have no doubt been acquired by compulsion during the lives of the parents: and temper and tameness may be modified in a breed by the treatment which the individuals receive. Knowing that a pig has been taught to point, one would suppose that this quality in pointer-dogs was the simple result of habit, but some facts, with respect to the occasional appearance of a similar quality in other dogs, would make one suspect that it originally appeared in a less perfect degree, "_by chance_," that is from a congenital tendency{276} in the parent of the breed of pointers. One cannot believe that the tumbling, and high flight in a compact body, of one breed of pigeons has been taught; and in the case of the slight differences in the manner of hunting in young fox-hounds, they are doubtless congenital. The inheritance of the foregoing and similar mental phenomena ought perhaps to create less surprise, from the reflection that in no case do individual acts of reasoning, or movements, or other phenomena connected with consciousness, appear to be transmitted. An action, even a very complicated one, when from long practice it is performed unconsciously without any effort (and indeed in the case of many peculiarities of manners opposed to the will) is said, according to a common expression, to be performed "instinctively." Those cases of languages, and of songs, learnt in early childhood and _quite_ forgotten, being _perfectly_ repeated during the unconsciousness of illness, appear to me only a few degrees less wonderful than if they had been transmitted to a second generation{277}.