ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 221 



a noise resembling that of distant thunder. My dog became terror- 

 stricken at the sound ; but, as soon as I brought him to the apj^le-room 

 and showed him the true ccmse of the noise, he became again buoyant 

 and cheerful as usual. Another dog I had used to play at tossing dry 

 bones to give them the appearance of life. As an experiment, I one 

 day attached a 6ne thread to a dry bone before giving him the latter 

 to play with ; and, after he had tossed the bone about for a while as 

 usual, I stood a long way off and slowly beg.tin to draw it away from 

 him. So soon as he perceived that the bone was really moving on its 

 own account, his whole demeanor changed, and rushing under a sofa he 

 waited horror-stricken to watch the uncanny sjDectacle of a dry bone 

 coming to life. I have also greatly frightened this dog by blowing 

 soap-bubbles along the floor ; one of these he summoned courage enough 

 to touch with his paw, but as soon as it vanished he ran out of the room, 

 terrified at so mysterious a disappearance. Lastly, I have put this dog 

 into a paroxysm of fear by taking him into a room alone and silently 

 making a series of horrible grimaces. Although I had never in my life 

 hurt this dog, he became greatly frightened at my unusual behavior, 

 which so seriously conflicted with his general idea of uniformity in mat- 

 ters psychological. But I have tried this experiment with less intelli- 

 gent dogs without any other result than that of causing them to bark 

 at me. 



Of course in thus claiming for animals the power of forming general 

 conceptions, I mean only such general conceptions as can be arrived at 

 by the logic of feelings. So far, then, as the logic of feelings can carry 

 them, I maintain that the intellectual operations of animals are indis- 

 tinguishable from those of ourselves. For having thus shown that ani- 

 mals possess the faculty of abstraction, I shall now go on to show that 

 they possess the faculties both of judgment and of reason. My friend 

 Dr. Rae, the well-known traveler and naturalist, knew a dog in Orkney 

 which, used to accompany his master to church on alternate Sundays. 

 To do so he had to swim a channel about a mile wide ; and before 

 taking to the water he used to run about a mile to the north when the 

 tide was flowing, and a nearlj^ equal distance to the south when the 

 tide was ebbing, " almost invariably calculating his distance so well 

 that he landed at the neai-est point to the church." In his letter to me 

 Dr. Rae continues : " How the dog managed to calculate the strength 

 of the spring and neap tides at their various rates of speed, and always 

 to swim at the proper angle, is most surprising." 



So much, then, for judgment. For some good instances of reason- 

 ing in animals I am also indebted to Dr. Rae. Desiring to obtain 

 some arctic foxes, he set various kinds of traps ; but, as the foxes 

 knew these traps from previous experience, he was unsuccessful. Ac- 

 cordingly, he set a kind of trap with which the foxes in that part of the 

 country were not acquainted. This consisted of a loaded gun set upon 

 a stand pointing at the bait. A string connected the trigger of the 



