150 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE 
tively young puppies, this sense must be early present, 
and finally well developed. 
SENSE OF Support.—I have found in the case of all 
puppies, and several other kinds of animals examined, 
that even on the first day of birth they will not creep 
off a surface on which they rest, if elevated some little 
distance above the ground. When they approach the 
edge they manifest hesitation, grasp with their claws 
or otherwise attempt to prevent themselves falling, and, 
it may be, cry out, giving evidence of some profound 
disturbance in their nervous system. 
It would seem that there is no more urgent psychic 
necessity to young mammals than this sense of being 
supported. All their ancestral experiences have been 
associated with ¢erra firma, so that it is not very sur- 
prising that when ferra firma seems about to be re- 
moved they are so much disturbed. To my own mind 
this is one of the most instructive and striking psychic 
manifestations of young animals, though I am not aware 
that any attention has been called to it before; and 
instead of referring to it under any of the usual 
divisions of sense, as the muscular sense, pressure 
sense, etc., I prefer to treat the subject under the above 
general heading, for it seems to me that the feeling is a 
somewhat complex one. 
It is interesting to note that a water tortoise I have 
had for some years will at any time walk off a surface 
on which he is placed. But this is not a creature that 
always is on terra firma in the same sense as a dog, but 
it frequently has occasion to drops off logs, ete., into 
water. But again, I find this sense of support well 
marked in birds that drop themselves into “thin air.” 
Nevertheless, a consideration of ancestral experiences 
throws light on most cases, and perhaps on this one 
also. 
TASTE AND SMELL.—These things are so closely 
