70 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE 
any age and degree of development. In this case, as 
the animal is poor in resources of escape by flight, etc., 
the instinct may be valuable to it, but from the above 
account evidently not always. 
The general intelligence of the animal is low, for it 
will readily enter traps laid for it. I am the more 
confirmed in the above-stated view of the case,* and 
indeed of the extensive prevalence of such nervous 
phenomena, from an examination of an account of the 
behaviour of a Turkey Buzzard, given by Dr Prentiss 
in the paper to which reference has already been made. 
This writer states that, having winged a buzzard, on 
coming up with it the creature lay on its side as if 
dead. Believing it really was dead, he thrust it into 
his game-bag, brought it home, and threw it down in 
his yard, limp and apparently lifeless. A little later it 
was found running around, but on being approached 
it acted as before, and with each shamming it 
“ disgorged,” to use the writer’s expression. He further 
states that after a while it would only disgorge and 
hiss. Now, on comparing this “disgorging” with the 
phenomena described by Preyer, as witnessed in his 
animals that were truly hypnotic, I feel quite persuaded 
that this case of the buzzard is explicable by the facts 
of hypnotism, especially as the symptoms disappeared 
largely on familiarity with the surroundings: it was 
not a genuine case of feigning. The author of the 
account does not himself clearly indicate his view of 
the case. 
But Romanes, while inclined to the theories of Couch 
and Preyer as a partial explanation, adduces from the 
* Since writing the above I have been pleased to find that Dr 
Charles C. Abbott has given the so-called feigning of the opossum 
a careful, one might say, experimental examination. He has dis- 
cussed the subject in his work, ‘‘A Naturalist’s Rambles About 
Home,” and has been led to form conclusions similar to my own. 
