358 Mr. French's Inquiry concerning Instinct. 



excited by present sensations, or other circumstances, independent 

 of any proper will of the animals : in other words, they cannot 

 possess the power of calling up ideas, at pleasure ; for this would 

 be to grant them reflection : although, all their ideas being in a 

 state of association, the past becomes present, whenever any 

 similar sensation and perception take place.* 



The circumstance therefore of their acting, in contingent cases, 

 with propriety, upon ideas of the past spontaneously combined 

 with the present by the law of association, and their doing this 



* Since writing the above, I have accidentally perused the opinion of Mr. 

 Forsyth on the Nature of the Animal Memory, which, it will be seen, exactly 

 coincides with the definition above given of this faculty. Mr. Forsyth very 

 aptly remarks, that the spontaneous ideas of brutes may be in some measure 

 estimated by the presumable succession of ideas in the minds of insane per- 

 sons, in whom however the power of regulating this lower faculty, or of 

 using it aright, seems to be deficient or perverted ; whereas in brutes this is not 

 the case, as they never can lose that which they never had. Even mad Dogs, 

 he observes, form no exception to this rule; since their actions, when 

 suffering under hydrophobia, result, not from insanity, but from the pain and 

 sense of suffocation attendant on the disease. This, I conceive, is a very 

 reasonable view of the subject; but it leads directly to the inference that 

 animals, since they have not the intelligence which includes reflection, and are 

 therefore incapable of insanity, in the ordinary sense of the term, must have a 

 principle of perception analogous to it, and resulting from the action of in- 

 telligence upon their conscious perception, which, although it does not enable 

 them to call up ideas, as above remarked, enables them 10 regulate them, as 

 they are presented, in a manner analogical to what is rational. 



The following incident, witnessed by Mr. Corse, and related by him in the 

 Philosophical Transactions, is highly illustrative of the nature of the animal 

 memory. An Elephant which had escaped, and was subsequently captured 

 in company with a herd of wild Elephants, after an interval of eighteen 

 months, was recognised by one of the drivers. When any person approached 

 the animal, he appeared as wild and outrageous as the other Elephants, and 

 attempted to strike the person approaching him with his trunk ; until an old 

 hunter riding boldly up to him on a tame Elephant, ordered him to lie down, 

 pulling him by the ear at the same time; upon which the animal seemed quite 

 taken by surprize, and instantly obeyed the word of command, with as. much 

 quickness as the ropes with which he was tied permitted ; uttering at the same 

 time, a peculiar shrill squeak, through his trunk, as he had been formerly 

 known to do; by which he was immediately recognized by every person who 

 had ever been acquainted with this peculiarity. — See Fleming's Phil. o/Zool. 

 vol. i. p. 220. 



