The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1890-07-10
flNcTS.

* blors Known to AMI
= OF to Man.
s5S|| true that man is
I'll the various species
s. animal kingdom it
81 h upon us that, even
q 6ttion, we inherit none
+ marvellous instincts of
q IND genera, and have to
4 Va those greater but pure
lilies by which the most
animal instincts have
4 Ished Sir John Lubbock
yhere are insects, and very
5higher animals, which per-
S. his of which we have no
I !s md hear sounds which to us
BILE Yet we never hear of a
ltina that includes in its vision
lors depending on vibrations of
r which are too slow or too
Jr our ordinary eyes, nor Of q
81 ear which is entranced with
that to the great majority of our
IS is absolutely inaudible.
ain, we never hear Of human be-
IEyho could perform the feat of which
were told only recently of n blood
ind In dark night it followed up
gr three miles the trail of thief with
I'll hom the bloodhound could never
$Jlave been in contact (he had just pur-
Ii,Ni,, ~ ton ~ IN
yard in which the dog was chained up),
and finally sat down under the tree in
which the man had taken refuge
Why, we wonder, are those finer powers
for Discriminating and following the
track of the scent, which so many of
the lower animals possess, entirely ex-
tiaguished in man, if man be the real
heir of al the various genera which
show powers inferior to his own'
We see no trace in animals of that
high enjoyment of the finer scents
which make the blossoming of the
spring flowers so great delight to
human beings and yet men are entirely
destitute of that almost unerring power
OF tracking the path of an odor which
seems TO be one of the principal gifts of
many Quadrupeds and some birds. 1t
is the same with the power of dog or
cat to find its way back to home to
which it is attached, but from which it
has been taken by II route that it can
rot possibly follow on lis return, even
il it had the power of observing that
route which usually it has not. Nothing
could be more convenient than such g
power 10 lost child. But none ever
heard OF child who possessed it.
Still more enviablo is that instinct
possessed by so many birds of crossing
great tracts of land and sea without APP
parenlly any landmarks or seamarks to
guide them, and of reaching n quarter
of the globe which many of them have
never visited before, while those who
have visited it before have not visited
it often enough to learn the way.
The migratory birds must possess
either senses or instincts entirely be-
yond the range of human imagination,
and yet no one ever heard of the sur
vivGl of such q sense or instinct in any
member OF our race. 1t may be said,
indeed, that men have either inherited
or some way reproduced the slave max
ing instinct of some of the military
ants; bat this only enhances the irony
OF our destiny if we do indeed in any
sense inherit from these insect aristoc-
racies one of the most disastrous in
stincts of the audacious but INDECENT
creatures which fight SO much better
than they work What is still more
curious is that even where human be
ings have wholly exceptional and I'M
heard of powers they betray no traces
Of the exceptional and l,nheard of pow
ers of the races whose vital organize
ton we are said TO inherit.
The occasional appearance of very
rare mathematical powers, for instance,
50 far from being in any sense expli-
cable from below, looks much more
like inspiration from above. The cal
culating boy, who could not even give
any account of the process whereby he
arrived at correct results which the ed
ucated mathematician took some time
to verify, certainly was not reviving in
himself any of the rare powers of the
lower tribes of animals Nor do tho
prodigieS in music who show such mar
Vicious power in infancy recall to us
any instinct of the bird. the only mu-
steal creature except ourselves. Still
less, of course, does great moral genius,
the genius of Howard or a Clarkson,
suggest any reininiscence Of lower an
i.nal Efe.-American Analyst.