156 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 



worth publishing. I was led to make the experiments by 

 reading the instance given by Mr. Darwin in the ' Descent of 

 Man' of the large dog which he observed to bark at a parasol 

 as it was moved along a lawn by the wind, so presenting the 

 appearance of animation. Tlie dog on which I experimented 

 was a Skye terrier — a remarkably intelligent animal, whose 

 psychological faculties have already formed the subject of 

 several communications to this and other periodicals. As all 

 my experiments yielded the same results, I will only mention 

 one. The terrier in question, like many other dogs, used to 

 play with dry bones, by tossing them in the air, throwing 

 them to a distance, and generally giving them the appearance 

 of animation in order to give himself the ideal pleasure of 

 w^orrying them. On one occasion, therefore, I tied a long and 

 fine thread to a dry bone, and gave him the latter to play 

 with. After he had tossed it about for a short time, I took 

 the opportunity, when it had fallen at a distance from him 

 and while he was following it up, of gently drawing it away 

 from him by means of the long invisible thread. Instantly 

 his whole demeanour changed. The bone which he had pre- 

 viously pretended to be alive now began to look as if it 

 were really alive, and his astonishment knew no bounds. He 

 first approached it with nervous caution, as Mr. Spencer 

 describes ; but as the slow receding motion continued, and 

 he became quite certain that the movement could not be 

 accounted for by any residuum of the force which he had 

 himself communicated, his astonishment developed into dread, 

 and he ran to conceal himself under some articles of fur- 

 niture, there to behold at a distance the 'uncanny' spectacle 

 of a dry bone coming to life. 



" N"ow in this and all my other experiments I have no 

 doubt that the behaviour of the terrier arose from his sense of 

 the mysterious, for he was of a highly pugnacious disposition, 

 and never hesitated to fight any animal of any size or fero- 

 city ; but apparent symptoms of spontaneity in an inanimate 

 object which he knew so well, gave rise to feelings of awe 

 and horror, which quite enervated him. And that there was 

 nothing fetichistic in these feelings may safely be concluded 

 if we reflect, with Mr. Spencer, that the dog's knowledge of 

 causation for all immediate purposes being quite as correct 

 and no less stereotyped than is that of 'primitive man,' 

 when an object of a class which he knew from uniform past 

 experience to be inanimate suddenly began to move, he must 



