HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



279 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



Intelligence in Animals. — The following may, 

 perhaps, be of interest, as affording another striking 

 instance of intelligence in animals. Last autumn a 

 friend of mine residing at Torrington, Devon, stored 

 away in a cupboard under a flight of stairs two dozen 

 strong glass bottles of "home brewed " ginger wine, 

 laying the whole of them on their sides. A few weeks 

 afterwards the family was alarmed, night after night, 

 by hearing strange and unaccountable sounds after all 

 had retired to rest. Long-forgotten stories of haunted 

 houses began to obtrude themselves on the recollec- 

 tions of the inmates, and, the noises continuing, the 

 whole family became seriously alarmed. At length 

 the mystery was cleared up. One of the family, 

 having to go to the cupboard in which had been 

 placed the bottles, discovered that all the wine, with 

 the exception of one bottle-full, had disappeared, the 

 thieves having broken most of the bottles and left 

 the fragments of the glass scattered about on the 

 scene of the debauch. On closer examination, all the 

 corks were found to be more or less gnawed, and a 

 rat-hole was discovered at the back of the cupboard. 

 A trap was at once set, and any doubts as to the 

 thieves were soon removed by the capture of a large 

 rat. How the animals could have broken the bottles, 

 all of them being laid on their sides on the floor, remains 

 a mystery. The only way seemingly to account for 

 it is, that on discovering the contents of the bottles, 

 the rats had the intelligence to roll one against 

 another, until they succeeded in effecting their object. 

 — George M. Doe, Torrington. 



Intelligence in Man and Animals. — The 

 question is not whether reason and instinct are one 

 and the same thing ; but whether the intelligence of 

 animals is the same in kind, and differs only in 

 degree from the intelligence of man. There is a 

 very great difference between reason and instinct : 

 reason is a faculty dependent on instruction and 

 experience, and instinct a natural impulse independent 

 of instruction and experience, and I am driven to the 

 conclusion that reason, not only exists in animals, 

 but instinct in man ; in other words the same in- 

 telligence is common to both, the difference being 

 merely one of degree. The mind of a child has been 

 compared to a blank sheet of paper, and this is a fair 

 comparison : but he who invented the simile failed 

 to see traced in sympathetic ink upon the blank paper 

 a beautiful design, and so when circumstances and 

 those around trace upon it their design, the moist 

 colouring serves to reveal the latent colours too, and 

 the two designs become blended and inseparable : and 

 thus it is often difficult or even impossible to say if a 

 precise action is instinctive, or prompted by reason 

 (i.e. is the result of instruction or experience) ; but once 

 grant the existence of this latent tracing and instinct in 

 man is a necessary corollary. The passion for drink 

 need not be adduced. Are not genius and intuition 

 nearly akin to instinct ? Is not the boy poet, the child 

 who draws as soon as it can hold a pencil, but examples 

 of deep instinctive feeling ! " Some men," says the 

 writer of " Ecce Homo," " seem to attain truth by an 

 intense stare," and he instances Carlyle as an 

 illustration. The illustration becomes doubly instruc- 

 tive when Mill in his autobiography mentions the same 

 thing, how Carlyle as a poet saw things instantly, 

 while he (Mill) was obliged painfully to argue 

 up to them. Instances plainly showing animals are 

 endowed with reason are so common that I need not 

 cite any, but I would ask those of your correspondents 

 who disagree with my conclusions if they have never 



seen a dog perplexed and cogitate for some time 

 before acting ? It affects the general question but 

 little to cite isolated cases ; animals may reason, 

 though chicken peck up as soon as they are hatched, 

 just as men reason, though as children they once 

 sucked their mothers' breasts. Mr. H. D. Barclay 

 talks about moral faculties and abstract reasoning as 

 if he were comparing the intelligence of an average 

 Englishman with the intelligence of a spaniel or 

 water-hen. But the comparison must be a very 

 different one, and one would have thought no com- 

 parison necessary had the difference been merely one 

 of kind. The comparison must be made between the 

 lowest type of savage man and the highest type of 

 intelligent animal — between the savage, whose ideas 

 are limited, whose language is unknown, whose 

 moral faculties approve a meal of hot missionary, 

 whose abstract reasoning contrives to calculate his 

 four fingers and thumb, and the dog who rescues 

 his master's child, or pines and sickens when his 

 master dies. This subject is so closely linked with 

 others which powerfully affect men's minds that it is 

 difficult to approach it wholly free from prejudice. 

 Many hold as a matter beyond dispute that the vital 

 principle of animals is annihilated at death, and to 

 admit reason in the brute seems to doom all existence 

 to a like end. Again, the question affects and is 

 affected by the doctrine of evolution, and how is 

 it possible for those who think this doctrine sweeps 

 God from the universe and kills all hope of a future 

 life to judge the matter upon its bare merits? How 

 few too possess that sympathy with animals which is 

 necessary to read and understand the mute signs 

 which express their feeling and thought!— T. H. Powell. 



Instinct or Reason. — It is not yet that the 

 question whether instinct and reason differ in kind 

 or in degree will be settled. 0. B., in the September 

 number of Science-Gossip says very rightly that the 

 words instinct and reason should be denned before 

 we can discuss the matter justly. But here we are 

 met on the threshold by lions in the path, for if we 

 could agree on the true definitions of the terms there 

 would almost be an end of the whole matter. Dr. 

 Keegan's definition of instinct as a blind adaptation of 

 means to ends, and reason as a conscious adaptation 

 of means to ends, is as good as many, though far from 

 accurately marking the distinction which some en- 

 deavour to prove. Such a definition of instinct would 

 mark no line between the animal and vegetable world, 

 for in the latter means are adapted to ends in a 

 thousand varying contrivances. For the old view of 

 instinct perhaps Paley's definition is as good as any. 

 "An instinct is a propensity prior to experience and 

 independent of instruction." And Julius Caesar 

 Scaliger, in his mordacious criticism on poor Cardan 

 calls instinct "impetus sine electione," and says, 

 " Bruta non dicuntur velle, sed instigari : unde in- 

 stinctus dicitur a natura : sicut a Diis afflatio apud M. 

 Tullium." (Exercitatio cccvii.) These old-world 

 definitions are certainly not in accordance with facts, 

 if we admit that — as quoted from Mr. Darwin in my 

 letter in July Science-Gossip — " Animals may 

 constantly be seen to pause, deliberate, and resolve," 

 until this can be disproved I think it may safely and 

 surely be said that instinct and reason are degrees in 

 development of one faculty, and shade off imper- 

 ceptibly the one into the other. I should not say 

 that, "thin partitions do their bounds divide," but 

 rather that any chart which includes one must perforce 

 include the other. To what purpose is it that Dr. 

 Keegan tells of mistakes made by beavers ? If the 

 blind impulse of the castor drives him into an 

 occasional error, may we not share with him the 



