IN THE SHETLANDS IOI 
acted in something the same way that a bereaved 
mother may be supposed to, when she almost 
unconsciously lays out clothes or goes through some 
other once habitual process, in behalf of a dead 
child—forgetful, for a moment, or half-forgetful, 
of the change. All would have been brought about 
through association of ideas, one appropriate act 
suggesting and leading to others no longer so, but 
of whose propriety or otherwise the bird—or any 
animal—has probably but one means of judging—the 
presence or absence, namely, of the idea of them in 
its mind. 
Now when, as Miss Kingsley tells us, a negro, 
chatting in his hut, turns with a smile or a remark, 
to his mother—deceased, but whom he supposes to 
be sitting in the accustomed place there—may not 
this also be through association of ideas, producing 
a strong visual image of what he has so long been 
used to see? There is hardly anything that so 
readily summons up the image, with the remembrance, 
of the dead, as the place where they lived or the 
objects amongst which they moved. How much, 
for instance, does the familiar chair suggest the 
presence of some one who used habitually to sit in 
it. “I know,” says Darwin—referring to a visit to 
his old home after his father’s death, which had 
occurred during his absence on the famous voyage— 
“1 know if I could have been left alone in that green- 
house for five minutes, I should have been able to 
see my father in his wheel-chair as vividly as if he 
