{276} In the _Origin_, Ed. i., he speaks more decidedly against the belief that instincts are hereditary habits, see for instance pp. 209, 214, Ed. vi. pp. 321, 327. He allows, however, something to habit (p. 216). {277} A suggestion of Hering's and S. Butler's views on memory and inheritance. It is not, however, implied that Darwin was inclined to accept these opinions. _Hereditary habits compared with instincts._ The chief characteristics of true instincts appear to be their invariability and non-improvement during the mature age of the individual animal: the absence of knowledge of the end, for which the action is performed, being associated, however, sometimes with a degree of reason; being subject to mistakes and being associated with certain states of the body or times of the year or day. In most of these respects there is a resemblance in the above detailed cases of the mental qualities acquired or modified during domestication. No doubt the instincts of wild animals are more uniform than those habits or qualities modified or recently acquired under domestication, in the same manner and from the same causes that the corporeal structure in this state is less uniform than in beings in their natural conditions. I have seen a young pointer point as fixedly, the first day it was taken out, as any old dog; Magendie says this was the case with a retriever which he himself reared: the tumbling of pigeons is not probably improved by age: we have seen that in the case above given that the young sheep inherited the migratory tendency to their particular birth-place the first time they lambed. This last fact offers an instance of a domestic instinct being associated with a state of body; as do the "transandantes" sheep with a time of year. Ordinarily the acquired instincts of domestic animals seem to require a certain degree of education (as generally in pointers and retrievers) to be perfectly developed: perhaps this holds good amongst wild animals in rather a greater degree than is generally supposed; for instance, in the singing of birds, and in the knowledge of proper herbs in Ruminants. It seems pretty clear that bees transmit knowledge from generation to generation. Lord Brougham{278} insists strongly on ignorance of the end proposed being eminently characteristic of true instincts; and this appears to me to apply to many acquired hereditary habits; for instance, in the case of the young pointer alluded to before, which pointed so steadfastly the first day that we were obliged several times to carry him away{279}. This puppy not only pointed at sheep, at large white stones, and at every little bird, but likewise "backed" the other pointers: this young dog must have been as unconscious for what end he was pointing, namely to facilitate his master's killing game to eat, as is a butterfly which lays her eggs on a cabbage, that her caterpillars would eat the leaves.