INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 589 



these fishes is crude and faulty in the greatest degree. Nor can it be 

 said that this wastefulness is compensated by the great number of 

 eggs, for the production of so many eggs by the mother involves a 

 great expenditure of force, which might be saved by more highly-de- 

 veloped instincts. 



In view of all the instances given, I think we may conclude that 

 instinct is not a fixed, immutable, perfect law and guide, but an im- 

 perfect, improvable, gradually-acquired method of adjusting actions 

 to the surrounding conditions ; and therefore subject to slow perfec- 

 tion through the survival of the fittest variations. Let us now see 

 whether animals possess other mental powers than the instinctive ; 

 whether they exhibit any faculty which may properly be called intel- 

 ligence. No one doubts that most of our domestic animals admit 

 of individual improvement or education, but it may be said that this 

 improvement is due to man's intelligence, not to that of the animals 

 themselves. There is abundant proof, however, that animals are 

 capable of much individual improvement in a state of nature. You 

 can't catch old birds with chaff; and a new trap partakes of the prop- 

 erties of a new broom, Morgan, in his book on " The American 

 Beaver and his Works," says that beaver-houses are often found of a 

 construction very inferior to the average ; and that, according to the 

 Indians, these are the work of young animals which have not yet 

 completed their education. Every one who has studied the habits of 

 cats knows how frequently they fail to raise their first litter of kittens, 

 and a very careful observer tells me that this is true of white mice to 

 a much greater degree. 



Leroy, a writer of the seventeenth century, and a very reliable au- 

 thority, says that there is a marked inferiority in the nests made by 

 young birds, and that the best and most complicated nests are made 

 by those species of birds whose young remain a long time in the nest, 

 and thus have more opportunity to see how it is made. 



He says that not only are the nests of young birds badly made, 

 but that very unfit places are chosen for them, and that these defects 

 are remedied in time when the builders have been instructed by their 

 sense of the inconvenience they have endured. Wilson likewise 

 claimed that there is a very perceptible inferiority in the nests of 

 young birds. To one at all familiar with animals, the fact that each 

 individual undergoes a process of intellectual development and self- 

 education is so familiar tliat it seems strange that any one should 

 question it ; but, as the contrary statement is still occasionally met 

 with, it seemed proper to give the above instances of improvement. 



The fact that dogs dream, and under circumstances of peculiar 

 hardship and misfortune become crazy, seems to indicate a very close 

 similarity between their minds and ours ; and no one who has seen 

 an idiotic or half-witted dog can doubt that an ordinary dog has a 

 mind to lose. 



