ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 121 



appear to recognize earlier than any other ohject. Locke, 

 indeed, mentions recognition of the feeding-bottle as con- 

 temporaneous with that of the rod; but as our ideas on 

 matters of education have undergone some improvement 

 since his time, this statement would now be difficult to 

 verify. In my own child I observed that the power of asso- 

 ciating ideas extended in the ninth week from the feeding- 

 bottle to the bib, which was always and only put on before 

 feeding; for as soon as this was put on the child used to 

 cease to cry for the bottle. At this age, also, I observed 

 that when I put her woollen shoe upon her hand she gazed 

 at it intently, as if perceiving that some curious change had 

 come over the habitual appearance of the hand. At ten weeks 

 she knew her bottle so well that she would place the nipple 

 of it in her own mouth, and, when allowed to do so, would 

 hold the bottle herself while sucking. Generally, however, 

 she would fail in her attempts at introducing the nipple into 

 her mouth, clearly from a lack of co-ordinating power in her 

 muscles — the nipple striking various parts of her face. She 

 would then cry for the nurse to help. Preyer says* that at 

 eight months old his child was able to classify all glass bottles 

 as resembling, or belonging to the same order of objects, as a 

 feeding-bottle. I may add that at seven weeks old my child 

 used to cry when left alone in a silent room for a few minutes 

 — a fact which also seems to show a rudimentary power of 

 associating ideas, with the consequent perception of a change 

 in the habitual environment. 



Turning now to the animal kingdom, the first evidence of 

 memory that I have found in the psychological scale is in the 

 Gasteropoda, and consists in the Limpet returning to its 

 groove in the rock after having been crawling about upon a 

 browsing excursion.! This fact, I think, clearly proves the 

 power of remembering locality, and as such a grade of memory 

 < an scarcely be regarded as tht; earliest, we may reasonably 

 suppose thai the faculty really occurs still lower in the psycho- 

 logical scale of animals, although we have not as yet any 

 observations to prove the fact, Moreover, as Oysters learn by 



individual experience, acquired in the "Oyster-schools," i" 

 keep t beii shells closed for a much longer time than is natural 

 to uneducated individuals,! we must conclude that a dim power 



• LOO. rit., ]). 48. 



t Animal InMligtHot, pp. -3 9. t Ibid., j>. -•". 



