334 The Scottish Naturalist. 



than man, Instinct. The extraordinary ideas of Instinct and 

 Intelligence broached by the compiler of "Wild Animals" are 

 worthy of the attention of the Rev. James Wardrop for the 

 next instalment of his "Animal Psychosis;" and the notice of 

 both writers may be profitably directed to the following 

 works : — 



(i.) " Man and Beast, here and hereafter," by the Rev. J. 

 G. Wood, M.A., F.L.S., the writer of many a well-known 

 book of Popular Natural History. 

 (2.) " The Reasoning Power in Animals," by another English 



clergyman — the Rev. J. S. Watson, M.A. 

 (3.) " The History of .the Conflict between Science and Re- 

 ligion," by Professor Draper of New York ; and 

 (4.) " The Study of Sociology," by Herbert Spencer : the 

 two latter works constituting volumes of the " Interna- 

 tional Scientific Series." 

 (5.) The latest work on Insects, by Maurice Girard, Paris, 

 1873-6 ; which devotes a section to their " Instinct and 

 Intelligence" 

 Here are samples of the kind of Errors i?i Comparative Psy- 

 chology that are now being taught to boys of 16 or 18, in our 

 Academies or High Schools, by Popular Naturalists and their 

 publishers : — 



" The lower animals, left to themselves, are but living Me- 

 chanisms, and move in their appointed courses with as little 

 Deviation as the ball which is impelled from a gun" (p. 345). 



" What faculties they have that resemble those of man, are 

 Imitative, and are always purely Mechanical. If they have 

 any notion or thought of Results, they are incapable of pro- 

 ducing them, if the merely mechanical effort, to be successful, 

 necessitates the lowest effort of the Reasoning brain" (p. 219, 

 speaking of the Quadrumana). 



" The Reasoning faculty allows its possessor too much free- 

 dom of action to enable him to act with such unerring Saga- 

 city"* (p. 90). 



" The Tricks which a Domestic Animal can be taught, and 

 the Knowledge and Cunning it may acquire from Observation 

 are no more Evidence that it is guided by Reason than the 

 knowledge possessed by the most ignorant man, that if he slips 



* His illustration here is a Dog finding its way home — an exceptional 

 case. He fails to explain how "unerring sagacity" should lead to the 

 infinitely more numerous instances of its losing its way! 



