PDF - Wallace Online

iv ON INSTINCT IN MAN AND ANIMALS 95pleasurable sensations consequent on the act lead to its continuance.So walking is evidently dependent on the arrangementof the bones and joints, and the pleasurable exertion ofthe muscles, which lead to the vertical posture becominggradually the most agreeable one and there can be little;doubt that an infant would learn of itself to walk, even ifsuckled by a wild beast.Haw Indians travel through unknown and trackless ForestsLet us now consider the fact of Indians finding their waythrough forests they have never traversed before. This ismuch misunderstood, for I believe it is only performed undersuch special conditions as at once to show that instinct hasnothing to do with A it. savage, it is true, can find hiswaythrough his native forests in a direction in which he has nevertraversed them before ;but this is because from infancy hehas been used to wander in them, and to find his way byindications which he has observed himself or learnt fromothers.Savages make long journeys in many directions, and,their whole faculties being directed to the subject, they gaina wide and accurate knowledge of the topography, not only oftheir own district, but of all the regions round about. Everyone who has travelled in a new direction communicates hisknowledge to those who have travelled less, and descriptionsof routes and localities, and minute incidents of travel, formone of the main staples of conversation round the eveningfire.Every wanderer or captive from another tribe adds to thestore of information, and as the very existence of individualsand of whole families and tribes depends upon the completenessof this knowledge, all the acute perceptive faculties ofthe adult savage are devoted to acquiring and perfectingit.The good hunter or warrior thus comes to know the bearingof every hill and mountain range, the directions and junctionsof all the streams, the situation of each tract characterised bypeculiar vegetation, not only within the area he has himselftraversed, but for perhaps a hundred miles around it. Hisacute observation enables him to detect the slightest undulationsof the surface, the various changes of subsoil and alterationsin the character of the vegetation, that would beimperceptible or meaningless to a stranger. His eye is always