Literary Notices. iii 



phants are often hysterical and always nervous though discipline effects 

 great changes in their ordinary conduct. 



The chapter on the puma is most replete with data on psy- 

 chology. 



" Professor Prantl (Reformgedanken zur Logik) excogitated a 

 metaphysical system for beasts from the standpoint of an assumption 

 that the chasm which separated them from humanity is impassible. 

 He admits their resemblance in essential nature. He agrees that the 

 dissimilaritis which they exhibit are results of a difference in evolu- 

 tionary degree, and then his whole argument goes to show that this is 

 not the case, and that brute mind and human intellect are radically 

 distinct in structure and function. As this analysis of the intelligence 

 in mankind and inferior beings was made without reference to facts, it 

 is not surprising that they should be traversed by these in all direct- 

 ions, and that almost everything which the professor asserts to be im- 

 possible, is well known to naturalists in a matter of actual occurence. 

 Gato [a tame puma] himself set at naught many of his conclusions. 

 He may not have exhibited either love, gratitude, sense of duty, or 

 that spirit of self-sacrifice which dogs frequently, and other animals 

 sometimes, display, but he certainly possessed the 'time sense' that 

 Prantl attributes exclusively to man. His account of periods and 

 seasons was as accurate as possible ; he measured intervals and knew 

 when they came to an end. This animal "was prone to contempla- 

 tions that, as his eye and changing attitudes indicated, were not vague, 

 apathetic dreams ; no one can know that he did not revive mental 

 states and meditate on concentrically initiated ideas." " Books 

 amazed Gato. Nothing could be made out with regard to them by 

 means of scent or sight ; they were dead apparently, and not fit to 

 eat. What was in them that never came out? Why should they be 

 watched so closely ? This question he never found any satisfactory 

 answer to, and one might see that it often perplexed him." "Gato 

 absolutely refused to learn English, and would only respond to com- 

 munications made in the mother tongue." 



" Many animals are exceedingly vain, nearly or possibly quite 

 as much so as savage man, and vainer they could not be. Now this 

 trait is inseparable from a desire for praise. Gato was found of dis- 

 play and delighted in being noticed and admired." 



In the felidse injuries are soon forgotten and nobody 

 ever knew a lion or tiger to act in this regard like an elephant. 

 " Deep, concentrated persistent feeling is beyoud the Felidae. This 

 is why Dio Cassius' story of Androcles and his lion is untrue ; quite 



