EDUCATION IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 531 



if not to render amiable, fierce animals of moderate intelligence ; and 

 the argument is of more force because the training in falconry was 

 given to adult birds. Very little was done with birds taken from 

 the nest. They were doubtless more readily taught, but became 

 only indifferent hunters. The old books on falconry explain in great 

 detail the methods of proceeding in training adult falcons or hag- 

 gards; and some tell how one should keep them company and make 

 friends with them. 



When it comes to more intelligent animals, like the elephant and 

 the dog, the process of education is much less awkward, but its nature 

 is at bottom the same. Our dog has so long been the associate of 

 man that we may truly say it is born domesticated, and nothing is 

 left to be done but to train it for various useful purposes. But it 

 is different with the elephant, which is captured wild and adult; and 

 the processes to which recourse is had in training it are, therefore, 

 of particular interest to us. If the education of the adult elephant 

 can be effected without very great trouble and in a fairly short time, 

 it is because we have to do with an intelligent and even reflecting 

 animal, which holds an accurate recollection of events, and is capable 

 of reasoning about them — which, in short, acts almost as a man 

 would do. 



As much might be said of some of the monkeys — of that chim- 

 panzee, for example, which the French naval officer Grandpre saw 

 on a ship working at the capstan, assisting in the management, stok- 

 ing the furnace, etc.; or of those primates which are utilized at 

 Sierra Leone for the performance of many labors of man. If the 

 larger monkeys had been domesticated by man, and associated with 

 him for thousands of years as the dog has been, it would not be un- 

 reasonable to suppose that they would have been still more modified, 

 morally and physically, than that animal. They would probably 

 have made a closer approach to the inferior human races; for the 

 dog, different as he is from man, has been remarkably humanized by 

 his contact. This mental humanization of the dog is an extremely 

 important fact, as showing how powerful education may be; how, 

 if time enough is taken, it may modify the organization. The do- 

 mestic dog is evidently descended from one or several canidian ances- 

 tors similar to the wolf, very wild and not very intelligent, but 

 endowed with a social instinct. Many centuries have been required 

 to change it into the devoted companion and worshiper of man that 

 it is, to acquire its expressive bark instead of the wolf's howling, and 

 to assimilate the many qualities and capacities it exhibits so foreign 

 to its nature. Its civilization has not taken place all at once. We 

 still find half-wild dogs among the Australian hordes and other lower 

 races, that do not know how to bark, that have no affectionate rela- 



