PROGRESS IN THE LOWER ANIMALS. 175 



point of new species. A striking example of tliis perpetuation of 

 individual peculiarities is the sliort-legged and long-backed An- 

 con sheej), a comparatively recent product of ISTature rendered 

 permanent by the care of man. A pointer, greyhound, or collie 

 inherits and transmits to its offspring not only race attributes, but 

 also acquired aptitudes in the same manner and to the same de- 

 gree as a human being does who is distinguished for some special 

 faculty. There are prodigies of dogs which do not beget prodi- 

 gies of puppies, just as there are men of genius whose children 

 are by no means eminent for their intellectual endowments. 



If the conceptual world of the lower animals is limited and 

 fragmentary, so is that of savages and of ignorant and unculti- 

 vated men, who live for the most part in the present and the im- 

 mediate past, and have a relatively narrow range of thoughts and 

 experiences. Long-lived animals, such as parrots, ravens, and 

 elephants, have an advantage over short-lived animals in the de- 

 velopment of intelligence. Civilized man, however, not only lives 

 his own individual life, and profits, like other animals, from the 

 wisdom of his parents and the influences of his environment, but 

 also, by means of written records, lives the life of the race, of 

 which he enjoys the selectest fruits garnered in history. 



It must also be borne in mind that dogs are and always have 

 been bred for special purposes, such as pointing, retrieving, run- 

 ning, watching, and biting, but not for general intelligence. Mr. 

 Galton, who calls attention to this fact, suggests that it would be 

 interesting as a psychological experiment to mate the cleverest 

 dogs generation after generation, breeding and educating them 

 solely for intellectual power and disregarding every other consid- 

 eration. 



In order to carry out this plan to perfection and to realize all 

 the possibilities involved in such a comprehensive scheme, it 

 would be necessary to devise some system of signs by which dogs 

 would be able to communicate their ideas more fully and more 

 clearly than they can do at present, both to each other and to 

 man. That the invention of sucli a language is not impossible is 

 evident from what has been already achieved in the training of 

 dogs for exhibition, as well as from the extent to which they have 

 .learned to understand human speech by mere association with 

 man. Prof. A. Graham Bell believes that they may be taught to 

 pronounce words, and is now making scientific experiments in 

 this direction. The same opinion was expressed two centuries 

 ago by no less an authority than Leibnitz, who adduces some 

 startling facts in support of it. The value of such a language as 

 a means of enlarging the animal's sphere of thought and power 

 of conception, and of giving a higher development to its intel- 

 lectual faculties, is incalculable. 



