A ZOOLOGICAL ENIGMA. 359 



A ZOOLOGICAL ENIGMA. 



By FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D. 



PROFESSOR ULRICI, the modern Rosicrucian, defends spiritu- 

 alism on the plea that it meets the demands of what he calls our 

 Wunderbedilrfniss, the propensity to indulge in wonderment, which he 

 includes among the normal instincts of the human mind. A taste for 

 enigmas is a primitive manifestation of the thirst for knowledge in gen- 

 eral, and thus akin to the very primum mobile of all intellectual prog- 

 ress, but in its legitimate forms that propensity might exert its functions 

 on an ample field within the domain of the strictly physical sciences. 

 The problems of modern chemistry, physiology, and natural history con- 

 front us with countless unsolved questions, with phenomena more won- 

 derful in their reality than any dreams of hysterical hallucinations or of 

 the wildest fancy. The marvel-hunter who gropes his way through the 

 arcana of an unknown world might pursue his quarry more profitably 

 on the hunting-grounds of his own planet more successfully, too, if 

 he would keep his eyes open. The sunlit fields and the gaslit labora- 

 tory reveal truer wonders than the dark closet of the spook-manufac- 

 turer ; the tests of the naturalist yield the same result at all times and 

 under all circumstances their success does not depend on the obfusca- 

 tion of the locality (and of the witnesses) ; it is not jeopardized by the 

 presence of skeptical critics, or the absence of discreet accomplices. 

 Many notorious phenomena, apparently familiarized by their fre- 

 quency, in reality still involve mysteries whose solution might dis- 

 close new paths of research, or reflect a helpful light upon the prob- 

 lems of a kindred science. The diffusion of contagious diseases, sub- 

 marine currents, the synchronism of storms and shooting-stars, hiberna- 

 tion, the survival of reptiles in close-grained rocks, the weather- wisdom 

 of the tree-toad and trap-door spider, for instance, have been only par- 

 tially explained ; nay, every amateur naturalist may indulge in an ex- 

 periment whose general result seems so utterly inexplicable on any rec- 

 ognized scientific principle that it reduces our speculations to a phrase- 

 ology of metaphors to the nomenclature of an unknown quantity. 



We often hear of the wondrous sagacity generally ascribed to 

 memory or acuteness of scent which enables a dog to find his way 

 home by unknown roads, even from a considerable distance. I think it 

 can be practically demonstrated that this faculty has nothing to do 

 with memory, and very little with scent, except in a quite novel sense 

 of the word. 



Last fall, my neighbor, Dr. L. G , of Cincinnati, Ohio, exchanged 



some suburban property for a house and office near the City Hospital, 

 and at the same time discharged a number of his four-footed retainers. 

 A litter of poodle puppies were banished to Covington, Kentucky, across 



