HAND OF THE PAST

Evening Star, Issue 19020, 15 August 1925, Page 10

HAND OF THE PAST

GUf’iC’JS HABITS

[By Professor J. Arthur Thomson, ill ‘John o’ London’s Weekly.’]

The dog turns round and round on the hearthrug, recaptiulating in its somnolence, when “ The .Unconscious ” often shows face, what the ancestral wolf used to do, untold ages ago, when it tried to make a comfortable couch among the herbage. Some Aberdeenshire cattle transported to a ranch in California hid their young calves in a thicket when they went to graze in the open—suddenly harking back, after a Jong lineage of domestication, to a well-known habit of wild cattle, so different in this respect from the more quickly-moving wild horses among which the foals totter along after their mothers very soon after birth. Even to this day the cow gives her calf heavy drinks, at long intervals, hut the mare gives her foal many short drinks, which do not incommode its movements.

The horse “ shying ” at a rustle in the hedgerow is almost unwittinglyobeying an old-established reaction which saved its ancestors from being bitten by a lunging snake. Every year one reads in the country papers of a dog being shot for sheep-worry-ing. Joined by some comrades, whom it more or less happened to meet at night, it suddenly loses its loyalty and becomes once more a wolf. In the absence of the master, who has been, accepted as the head or the pack, if we understand the dog’s mental processes rightly, the guardian of the herds becomes irresponsible; the conventional restraints of domestication slip away and the promptings of the old wolfish nature find expression. Wo wonder that it does not happen oftener. We believe that when a full-grown domestic cat plays with a mouse—a somewhat puzzling activity—it is harking back to the habit that many wild mother-carnivores have of playfully showing their offspring how to make a capture.. The playfulness of kittens has a different meaning, it is an expression of instinctive promptings that are in line witji the future business of life, and it is also an exuberant overflow of the assertive individuality of youth—often with some new departure or originality. Various instances of the living hand of the past are discussed in a fine book of many years ago, Robinson’s ‘ Wild Traits in Tame Animals,’ raid everyone can discover others foy hiinsclf. ' It is important, however, to see these reawakened wild traits as particular examples of a large fact of life, that the past lives on in the present. We recognise this in vestigial or vanishing structures which have dwindled beyond utility, such as the remnant of a third eyelid in the corner of our eye, or the traces of muscles in the trumpet of our ear. Wo see another aspect of the same thing in embryonic development, when the animal climbs up its own genealogical tree, to some extent at least. The tadpole is going to become a frog* Irat it lingers lor a while among the fishes, for instance, ns regards its heart and circulation. The very lopsided plaice and sole, that rest and swim on their silvery' left side, are to begin with quite symmetrical, just like ordinary fishes. At that stage they live near the surface of the sea; later on they lie on the floor. We must think of this enregistering or engraining of the past as a. general characteristic of life, and we may find clear and sometimes uncomfortable illustrations of it in the deepest currents of our own life strearrij often called the primary unconscious.” For it includes ancestral predispositions and behaviour tendencies which are not always, to put it mildly, sublimed by the control exercised by our higher selves. The ‘‘ape and tiger” that Tennyson speaks of are slow to die 1 We came on to this hue of thought by readiu o- a revised version of Dr George C. Williamson’s ‘Curious Survivals,’ a fascinating book that discusses the habits and customs of the past that still live in the present. Inose seem to us most interesting where the original significance has been quite lest and where there is no question of the persistence being due to _ their pieturesqueness or to our liking for tlio flavor of the antique. Tims the egg-rolling at I‘Aster, which still lingers m some parts of the country, is vastly more interesting than the continuance of a curfew hell. For who now knows why the eggs are rolled down the slope? Wo send a guinea as a subscription towards a portrait of our friend because there is a genteel gesture in reverting to the old coin, but who knows why the sportsman who brihgs down the first bird at a shooting party gets a feather in his cup? ■\ morning coat has two buttons near the small of the back, whose buttonholes, for fixing up the tails from the mud, have long since vanished. And at the wrist there are two or three buttons and buttonholes usually nuito functionless, but occasionally still usable if the wearer wishes to fold back the end of the sleeve. Perhaps there is some aesthetic reason for the persist--1 once of these relics, and it will be noticed that while the buttonholes ara usually quite vestigial, _ the button* themselves have not_ dwindled in size. Here we see the original significance at a glance, but who knows why ft “baker’s dozen” should be thirteenP We do not ourselves know why pub Ushers should give the book trade copies at the price of twelve. Mr Skeat has explained many of these survivals in his book. ‘ The Past at Our Doors (1913) • those that linger in costume and in language are very, Manv of them are certainly worth knowing, for it is of importance to realise that the past has a hen on the nresent. Really important, however, Is the lug fact of winch, these are but trivial instances, that m ’•pit pi all l™!lv“,.e ? s fc ps«S still lives « « midst and in ourselves.