ZOOLOGY. 



ANIMAL PSYCHOSIS. 

 By the Rev. J. Wardrop. 



LOOKING on the psychological manifestations of animals- 

 and of man, we are at once struck by the intense simi- 

 larity of the two series. We have to go far and wide over the 

 field of man's mental nature before we find in him anything 

 that we wholly miss in his dog. Between the Asiatic and his 

 elephant, where is the difference ? What do we discern in the 

 two-legged member of the pair that is quite exclusively a pre- 

 rogative of humanity — except, perhaps, the matter of dominion 

 or a certain mere superiority in adroitness and craft, which 

 dominion and superiority are themselves sometimes made 

 sufficiently questionable ? 



This similarity extends to the material organism by which 

 the mental series in both cases is ministered to or from which 

 it arises, as the case may be. The question then presents itself, 

 is there really any specific uninterchangeable difference between 

 the two classes of phenomena? Or, allowing there may be 

 some difference in degree, are the kinds of powers, competent 

 to the two orders of life, identical ? The question, always in- 

 teresting on the ground of mystery, has of late become urgent 

 on the ground of scientific needs. In its settlement, the 

 interests of the most thorough-going of biological theories — 

 the evolution-theory of life — are held to be in a very serious 

 manner implicated. And, to those, who, from the facts of con- 

 sciousness, experience, and revelation, maintain the existence of 

 a dual substantial nature in man — a material and mental, and an 

 immaterial and immortal, the question places additional points 

 of truth at stake, and, in proportion, presents more elements 

 of interest; for if the psychological manifestations of the lower 

 animals are of the same nature with those of man, then it would 



