The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1890-09-05
FORGOTTEN INSTINCTS.
Sounds, Sights and Colors Known to Ami
mails and Not to Man.

Sounds, Sights and Colors Known to Ami.
mails and Not to Man.
If the doctrine be true that man is
really the heir of all the various species
and genera of the animal kingdom it
seems a little hard upon us that,
even by way of exception, we inherit
none of the more marvellous instincts of
those species and genera and have to be
content with those greater but purely
human faculties by which the most
wonderful of animal instincts have been
extinguished. Sir John Lubbock main
tains there are insects, and very likely
even higher animals, which perceive
colors of which we have no glimpses
and hear sounds which to us are inaudi-
BILE. Yet we never hear of a human
retina that includes in it's vision those
colors depending on vibrations of the
ether which are too slow or too rapid
for our ordinary eyes, nor of human
ear which is entranced with music that
to the great majority of our species is
absolutely inaudible.
Again, we never hear of human
being who could perform the feat of
which we were told only recently of
bloodhound. In dark night it fol-
lowed up for three miles the trail of
thief with whom the bloodhound could
never have been in contact Che had just
purloined some rolls of tan from the
lanyard 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 extin-
guished in man, if man be the real heir
of all 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 hui
man 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 it's way back to a home to
which it is attached, but from which it
has been taken by route that it can
not possibly follow on it's return. even
If it had the power of observing the
route, which usually it has not. Moth
ing could be more convenient than such
power to lost child. But none ever
heard of a child who possessed it.
Still more enviable is that instinct
possessed by so many birds of crossing
great tracts of land and sea without ap-
parently any landmarks or sea-marks to
guide them, and of reaching 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 bird must possess
either senses or instincts entirely be-
yond the range of human Imagination
and yet no one ever heard of the sur
vival of such sense or instinct in
any member of our race. 1t
may be said, indeed, that men
have either inherited or in some
way reproduced the slave-making
instinct of some of the military
ants; but 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 indolent
creatures which fight so much better
than they work. What is still mora
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 unheard-of
powers of the races whose vital organ
izations we are said to inherit
The occasional appearance of very
rare mathematical powers, for instance,
so far from being in any sense explic-
able from below, looks more like in
spiration from above. The calculating
boy, who could not even give any &C
count of the process whereby he arrived
at correct results which the educated
mathematician took some time to
verify, certainly was not reviv-
ing in himself any of the rare
power of the lower tribes of
animals. Nor do the prodigies in music
who show such marvellous power in in
fancy recall to us any instinct of the
bird, the only musical creature except
ourselves. Still less, of course, does
great moral genius-the genius of a
Howard or a Clarkson-suggest any
Renaissance of lower animal life
American Analyst.