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 Komanes, 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. 



