100 THE BIRD WATCHER 
occasionally and forge moment, put its partner in 
place of the young one. 
We must not think only of the forgetfulness of 
animals—of their inability to retain past actions or 
events clearly in the mind, so as to remember them, 
long afterwards, in the way that we do. We should 
bear in mind, also, that they are influenced, like 
ourselves, by association of ideas, and that savages, 
whose psychology should stand nearer to theirs than 
our own, often confound the subjective with the 
objective—the idea of a thing in their mind, that is 
to say, with the thing itself, outside it. It would be 
quite natural, in my idea, that any of these guillemots 
should, by the mere catching of a fish, be reminded 
of the occupation it had for so long previously been 
engaged in, and the mental picture, thus raised, of 
the chick on the ledge, might well be so vivid as to 
overcome the mere negative general impression that 
it was no longer there. Under the influence of this 
delusion—let us say, then—the bird flies in with its 
fish, and, seeing it do so, its partner, by a similar 
association of ideas, is affected in just the same way, 
seeing also in its mind’s eye—less blurred, perhaps, by 
innumerable figures than our own—a lively image of 
its child. What follows we have seen—a little play 
or pretence, as it looked like, on the part of the two 
birds, who thus, as it were, reminded one another of 
what both so well remembered. Of such conscious 
reminiscence, however, I do not suppose them to 
have been capable, but they may both, I think, have 
