252 ANIMAL LIFE 



lect or reason. While its excessive development in man 

 obscures its close relation to instinct, both shade off by 

 degrees into reflex action. Indeed, no sharp line can be 

 drawn between unconscious and subconscious choice of 

 reaction and ordinary intellectual processes. 



Most animals have little self-consciousness, and their 

 reasoning powers at best are of a low order ; but in kind, 

 at least, the powers are not different from reason in man. 

 A horse reaches over the fence to be company to another. 

 This is instinct. When it lets down the bars with its teeth, 

 that is reason. When a dog finds its way home at night by 

 the sense of smell, this may be instinct ; when he drags a 

 stranger to his wounded master, that is reason. When a 

 jack-rabbit leaps over the brush to escape a dog, or runs in 

 a circle before a coyote, or when it lies flat in the grass as a 

 round ball of gray indistinguishable from grass, this is in- 

 stinct. But the same animal is capable of reason that is, 

 of a distinct choice among lines of action. Not long ago a 

 rabbit came bounding across the university campus at Palo 

 Alto. As it passed a corner it suddenly faced two hunting 

 dogs running side by side toward it. It had the choice of 

 turning back, its first instinct, but a dangerous one ; of 

 leaping over the dogs, or of lying flat on the ground. It 

 chose none of these, and its choice was instantaneous. It 

 ceased leaping, ran low, and went between the dogs just as 

 they were in the act of seizing it, and the surprise of the 

 dogs, as they stopped and tried to hurry around, was the 

 same feeling that a man would have in like circumstances. 



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 

 cattle. 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 



