PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY DURING THE QUARTER. 235 



Memory and Reason in Animals. 



Mr. Sterndale then read a paper on "Memory and Reason in Wild Animals." 

 He said that the beginnings of instinct, or he would rather call it reason, began 

 very low down in the scale of animal life, as low down as the Rhizopoda, and 

 he traced it gradually upwards through the Mollusca and Insecta to birds, and 

 from thsm to the larger animals. He gave some interesting cases of instinct, 

 which he was careful to separate from reason, in monkeys, which rejected certain 

 deadly poisons hurtful to them, and readily took other poisons equally deadly to 

 man and other creatures but which had no effect on them. He then gave 

 cases of reasoning in monkeys and other mammals, and passed on to examples 

 of memory, illustrating his cases by tigers, elephants, horses, &c„ He pointed 

 out that in desert islands, untrodden by human foot, there was no instinctive 

 dread of man shown by wild animals. One curious genus of Marine mammalia, 

 Steller's Rhytina, has been exterminated by sailors owing to this over-confidence ; 

 but the advent of man is followed by the loss of this trusting nature, and this is 

 the outcome of reasoning faculties. The wild birds soon see that to confide is to be 

 knocked on the head. Birds, he said, exceeded mammals, with the exception of 

 monkeys, in imitative power. Parrots are made to tali?, other birds to whistle. 

 There is no such mimicry amongst mammals, with perhaps the exception of the 

 dog, the bark of which is said to be the unconscious mimicry of the gruffness 

 of the human voice. Wild dogs and wolves cannot bark but only howl. 

 Domestic dogs which run wild lose in a few generations the power of barking 

 and revert to the howl, as in the case of those on the island of Juan Fernandez ; 

 on the other hand, wolf cubs brought up with domesticated dogs learn to bark. 

 He concluded by saying : — " I must however not tax your patience any longer. 

 Did time permit of it, I could give many curious instances of the sagacity of 

 wild animals, their skill in avoiding traps, and their own cunning in circumvent- 

 ing others. The most marvellous creature is the North American wolverine or 

 glutton, regarding which much has been written by Dr. Elliot Coues. I think 

 he heads the list for intelligent rascality, and I recommend such of our members 

 as are interested to turn up the abridged account of it in the second volume of 

 Cassell's Natural History, and they will be amply repaid for five minutes reading. 

 We have nothing like this thoroughpaced villain amongst our comparatively 

 well-behaved denizens of the jungles. I will wind up with a short certificate to 

 his bad character from Dr. Coues : — ' The desire for accumulating property 

 seems so deeply implanted in this animal that, like tame ravens, it does not 

 appear to care much what it steals, so that it can exercise its favourite propen- 

 sity to commit mischief. An instance occurred within my own knowledge, in 

 whl.'h a hunter and his family, having left their lodge unguarded during their 

 absence, on their return round it completely gutted — the walls were there, but 

 nothing else. Blankets, guns, kettles, axes, cans, knives, and all the other para- 

 phernalia of a trapper's tent, had vanished, and the tracks left by the beast 

 showed who had beeu the thief. The family set to work, and by carefully 

 following up all his paths, recovered, with some trifling exceptions, the whole of 

 the lost property.' It is well I nay pay for our Indian police that we have not 

 wolverines amoug our criminal classes in this country." 



The proceedings soon afterwards came to a close. 



