MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 259 



rooms, will endeavour to obtain their liberation by pulling a 

 latch or ringing a bell. A monkey, wishing to get into a par- 

 ticular tree, and seeing a dangerous snake at the bottom of it, 

 watched for hours till he found the reptile for a moment off 

 his guard ; he sprang upon it, and seizing it by the neck, 

 bruised its head to pieces against a stone ; after which he 

 quietly ascended the tree. We can hardly doubt that the 

 animal seized and bruised the head, because he knew or judged 

 there was danger in that part. It has several times been ob- 

 served that in a field of cattle, when one or two were mischievous, 

 and persisted long in annoying or tyrannizing over the rest, the 

 herd, to all appearance, consulted, and then making a united 

 effort, drove the troublers off the ground. The members of a 

 rookery have also been observed to take turns in supplying the 

 wants of a family reduced to orphanhood. All of these are 

 acts of reason, in no respect different from similar acts of men. 

 Moreover, although there is no heritage of accumulated know- 

 ledge amongst the lower animals, as there is amongst us, they 

 are in some degree susceptible of those modifications of natural 

 character, and capable of those accomplishments which we call 

 education. The taming and domestication of animals, and the 

 changes thus produced upon their nature in the course of gene- 

 rations, are results identical with civilization amongst ourselves ; 

 and the quiet, servile steer is probably as unlike the original 

 wild cattle of this country, as the English gentleman of the 

 present day is unlike the rude baron of the age of King John. 

 Between a young, unbroken horse, and a trained one, there is, 

 again, all the difference which exists between a wild youth, 

 reared at his own discretion in the country, and the same 

 person when he has been toned down by long subjection to 

 the influences of refined city society. Of extensive combina- 

 tions of thought, we have no reason to believe that any animals 

 are capable and yet most of us must feel the force of Walter 

 Scott's remark, that there was scarcely anything which he 

 would not believe of a dog. There is a curious result of edu- 

 cation in certain animals, namely, that habits to which they 

 have been trained, in some instances become hereditary. For 

 example, the accomplishment of pointing at game, although a 

 pure result of education, appears in the young pups brought 

 up apart from their parents and kind. The peculiar leap of 

 the Irish horse, acquired in the course of traversing a boggy 

 country, is continued in the progeny brought up in England. 

 This hereditariness of specific habits suggests a relation to that 



