692 Proceedings. 



m 



gressive and accumulated development. The story of the horses gnawing 

 down the cabbage-trees to obtain moisture is parallel with the well-known 

 habit of the mules in Mexico kicking the great cactus-trees for the same 

 purpose. 



Mr. Hulke remarked that the reasoning of animals differed from that 

 of man only in degree. He mentioned several facts relating to insects 

 and animals to illustrate what he meant. 



Mr. Hudson gave an account of experiments made bj"- Sir J. Lubbock 

 ■with ants, which appeared to indicate that insects, when placed out of 

 their ordinary sphere of action, exhibited very limited reasoning-powers. 



Mr. R. C. Harding said that the vulgar discrimination between 

 instinct and reason might not be so unscientific as had been assumed. 

 He considered it was based on a difference, not one of degree. Instinct he 

 regarded as the intuitive perception of interior qualities, as distinguished 

 from those merely exterior properties made known to us by the five 

 senses. The instincts might therefore be taken as supplementary senses, 

 on a different plane from the five ordinarily recognised. Between the 

 perception by means of a sense and the intellectual result of rational 

 effort there was an evident distinction, and a parallel distinction could 

 be traced between instinct and reason. The terror of a horse at the odour 

 of an unknown wild beast might be accounted for by inherited memory, 

 but it seemed more reasonable to attribute it to the immediate perception 

 of a maleficent quality. Protective instincts like this were found through- 

 out nature, but were so rudimentary in man that, physicalh', as com- 

 pared with beasts and insects, he was the inferior animal. The nearer 

 man approximated to the lower animals in his mode of life and intel- 

 lectual development the more powerful these instincts appeared to be ; 

 but as his rational capacity increased they were ignored, and seemed 

 gradually to disappear. Yet they were by no means to be despised, as 

 where they existed they enabled him to arrive by a short cut at a point 

 which would otherwise only be attained by great and laborious mental 

 effort. Sometimes a child was found to possess almost in infancy faculties 

 ■which showed how great the undeveloped possibilities of mankind were 

 in this direction. There were well-attested cases of children knowing 

 neither letters nor figures — one a negro boy — who had a natural perception 

 of qualities and relations of numbers, and a skill in dealing with them 

 exceeding that of trained mathematicians. The mental quality that 

 could at once recognise a prime of almost any number of figures at sight, 

 and the power of analysis which could immediately resolve any divisible 

 number into its factors, were not to be attained by the severest training ; 

 but tliis gift was actually possessed by a calculating child. Young 

 Mozart in early infancy possessed a similar grasp of the qualities of 

 sound — a practical as well as a theoretical perception, for he was able 

 to play any instrument at sight. Hereditary memory would scarcely 

 account for phenomena like these, which were interesting as showing how 

 immeasurably human instinct in its higher forms transcended that of the 

 animal creation. Regarding Sir J. Lubbock's celebrated experiments 

 with ants, careful and systematic as they were, and completely as they 

 failed to show anything like intelligent or connected action, he did nob 

 think their results warranted us in rejecting the accumulated testimony 

 of past ages on the subject. 



The President said that Mr. Carlile's illustration of heredity re- 

 called to his mind that many years ago, when riding a very quiet horse, 

 the animal suddenly leapt aside, and began trembling in great fear, on 

 seeing a piece of rata vine coiled up and lying in the road, recalling the 

 appearance of a snake. This horse was two generations from an Aus- 

 tralian progenitor. It had been said that instinct is " inherited memory,"' 

 and, although that miglib seem to explain such facts as the orderly move- 

 ments and almost automatically-regulated actions of ants and bees, it by 



