Chap. II. MENTAL POWERS. 45 



a particular monkey would turn out a good actor, he 

 answered that it all depended on their power of atten- 

 tion. If when he was talking and explaining anything 

 to a monkey, its attention was easily distracted, as by 

 a fly on the wall or other trifling object, the case was 

 hopeless. If he tried by punishment to make an in- 

 attentive monkey act, it turned sulky. On the other 

 hand, a monkey which carefully attended to him could 

 always be trained. 



It is almost superfluous to state that animals have 

 excellent Memories for persons and places. A baboon 

 at the Cape of Good Hope, as I have been informed by 

 Sir Andrew Smith, recognised him with joy after an 

 absence of nine months. I had a dog who was savage 

 and averse to all strangers, and I purposely tried his 

 memory after an absence of five years and two days. I 

 went near the stable where he lived, and shouted to 

 him in my old manner ; he showed no joy, but in- 

 stantly followed me out walking and obeyed me, 

 exactly as if I had parted with him only half-an-hour 

 before. A train of old associations, dormant during five 

 years, had thus been instantaneously awakened in his 

 mind. Even ants, as P. Huber 12 has clearly shewn, 

 recognised their fellow-ants belonging to the same com- 

 munity after a separation of four months. Animals 

 can certainly by some means judge of the intervals of 

 time between recurrent events. 



The Imagination is one of the highest prerogatives 

 of man. By this faculty he unites, independently of 

 the will, former images and ideas, and thus creates bril- 

 liant and novel results. A poet, as Jean Paul Richter 

 remarks, 13 " who must reflect whether he shall make a 



12 'Les Moeurs des Fourmis,' 1810, p. 150. 



13 Quoted in Dr. Maudsley's ' Physiology and Pathology of Mind,' 

 186S, pp. 19, 220. 



