WCP4073

[1]

Old Orchard,

Broadstone,

Wimborne.

Feb[ruar]^y. 3^rd 1912

Dear Mr Harting,

I shall be much obliged if you will find me Dr. Gould's paper on the "Homing of Dogs" which I now hear of for the first time. As to his theory that they do it by a "magnetic" sense, that seems to me the wildest & most improbable suggestion of all the wild suggestions on the subject of Instinct, and I am anxious [2] to see what facts he adduces to support it or render it necessary. Prima facie, there are two fatal objections to it. (1) If they possessed it, it would be absolutely useless to them, unless you assume that they have also a memory of every turn they take & all the angles & lines of direction, & can get the result of the whole as a surveyor does when he plots them on a map. He must also have and equally accurate memory of distances, and be able to sum up the whole of [3] angles & distances, and work out the result in his head, which the best mathematician could not do without a map!

(2) All this wonderful faculty would, in 99 p[er].c[ent]. of cases be absolutely useless to him because each quadruped's life is spent in slowly getting a visual and odoriferous of his daily, monthly, and yearly environment, under the ^early guidance of his parents, family, or species,— which is certainly adequate to his needs.

In a state of nature he never gets to any place, without [4] himself passing through the intermediate country,— often repeatedly & in slightly varying lines.

When I have read this paper, I shall be better able to give an opinion.

Yours very truly | Alfred R Wallace [signature]