Mind and heredity / by Vernon L. Kellogg.

  • Vernon Lyman Kellogg
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Mind and heredity / by Vernon L. Kellogg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    36 MIND AND HEREDITY ance, for both of us, by a single sufficient phrase. Well, I'll be damned, said he. Along with this I may refer to an obser¬ vation made on another jack-rabbit by Dr. David Starr Jordan of Stanford, which he used to recount to his students of evolution. I give the story in Dr. Jordan's own words. On the open plains of Merced County, California, the jack-rabbit is the prey of the bald eagle. Not long since a rabbit pursued by an eagle was seen to run among the cat¬ tle. Leaping from cow to cow, he used these animals as a shelter from the savage bird. When the pursuit was closer, the rabbit broke cover for a barbed-wire fence. When the eagle swooped down on it, the rabbit moved a few inches to the right, and the eagle could not reach him through the fence. When the eagle came down on the other side, he moved across to the first. And this was continued until the eagle gave up the chase. It is instinct that leads the eagle to swoop on the rabbit. It is instinct again for the rabbit to run away. But to run along the line of a barbed-wire fence demands some degree of reason. If the need to repeat it arose often in the lifetime of a single rabbit it would become a habit. It is not my intention, however, to debate