MENTAL POWERS. -83 



catch, and then bringing them live birds and letting them 

 loose. 



I Hardly any faculty is more important for the intellectual 

 progress of man than Attention. Animals clearly manifest 

 this power, as when a cat watches by a hole and prepares 

 to spring on its prey. Wild animals sometimes become so 

 absorbed when thus engaged that they may be easily ap- 

 proached. Mr. Bartlett has given me a curious proof how 

 variable this faculty is in monkeys. A man who trains 

 monkeys to act in plays used to purchase common kinds 

 from the Zoological Society at the price of five pounds for 

 each; but he ottered to give double the price if he might 

 keep three or four of them for a few days in order to select 

 one. When asked how he could possibly learn so soon 

 whether a particular monkey would turn out a good actor, 

 he answered that it all depended on their power of atten- 

 tion. If when he was talking and explaining anything to 

 a monkey its attention was easily distracted, as by a fly on 

 the wall or other trifling object, the case was hopeless. If 

 he tried by punishment to make an inattentive monkey act 

 it turned sulky. On the other hand, a monkey which 

 carefully attended to him could always be trained. 



It is almost superfluous to state that animals have excel- 

 ent ')7jmories for persons and places. A baboon at the 

 Cape oiCrood Hope, as I have been informed by Sir An- 

 drew Smith, recognized him with joy after an absence of 

 nine months. I had a dog who was savage and averse to 

 all strangers, and I purposely tried his memory after an 

 absense of five years and two days. I went near the stable 

 where he lived and shouted to him in my old manner; he 

 showed no joy, but instantly followed me out walking, and 

 obeyed me exactly as if I had parted with him only half an 

 hour before. A train of old associations, dormant during 

 five years, had thus been instantaneously awakened in his 

 mind. Even ants, as P. Huber* has clearly shown, recog- 

 nized their fellow-ants belonging to the same community 

 after a separation of four months. Animals can certainly 

 by some means judge of the intervals of time between 

 recurrent events. 



The Imagination is one of the highest prerogatives of 

 man. By this faculty he unites former images and ideas, 



* "Les Mceurs des Fourmis," 1810, p. 150. 



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