Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/614

596 by him, seems to me of no less significance—I mean the instinct of guarding property. This is a purely artificial instinct, created by man expressly for his own purposes: and it is now so strongly ingrained in the intelligence of the dog that it is unusual to find any individual animal in which it is wholly absent. Thus, we all know that, without any training, a dog will allow a stranger to pass by his master's gate without molestation, but that as soon as the stranger passes within the gate, and so trespasses upon what the dog knows to be his master's territory, the animal immediately begins to bark, in order to give his master notice of the invasion. And this leads me to observe that barking is in itself an artificial instinct, developed, I believe, as an offshoot from the more general instinct of guarding property. None of the wild species of dog are known to bark, and therefore we must conclude that barking is an artificial instinct, acquired by the domestic dog for the purpose of notifying to his master the presence of thieves or enemies. I may further observe that this instinct of guarding property extends to the formation of an instinctive idea on the part of the animal, of itself as constituting part of that property. If, for instance, a friend gives you temporary charge of his dog, even although the dog may never have seen you before, observing that you are his master's friend and that his master intends you to take charge of him, he immediately transfers his allegiance from his master to you, as to a deputed owner, and will then follow you through any number of crowded streets with the utmost confidence. Thus, whether we look to the negative or to the positive influences of domestication upon the psychology of the dog, we must conclude that a change has been wrought, so profound that the whole mental constitution of the animal now presents a more express reference to the needs of another, and his enslaving animal, than it does to his own. Indeed, we may say that there is no one feature in the whole psychology of the dog which has been left unaltered by the influence of man, excepting only those instincts which, being neither useful nor harmful to man, have never been subject to his operation—such, for instance, as the instinct of burying food, turning round to make a bed before lying down, etc,

I will now turn to another branch of the subject, and one which, although in my opinion of the greatest importance, has never before been alluded to; I mean the local and specific variations of instinct. By a local variation of instinct, I mean a variation presented by a species in a state of nature over some particular area of geographical distribution. It is easy to see the importance of such local variations of instinct as evidence of the transmutation of instinct, if we reflect that such a local variation is obviously on its way to becoming a new instinct. For example, the beavers in California have ceased to make dams, the hyenas in South Africa have ceased to make burrows, and there is a squirrel in the neighborhood of Mount Airy which has