146 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 



the octopus which followed a lobster with which it had been 

 fighting into an adjacent tank, by laboriously climbing up 

 the perpendicular partition between the two tanks, must 

 have been actuated by an abiding mental image, or memory, 

 of its antagonist ; the spiders which attach stones to their 

 webs to hold them steady during gales must similarly be 

 actuated by a faculty of Imagination ; and the same is no 

 less true of the crab which, when a stone was rolled into its 

 burrow, removed other stones near its margin lest they 

 should roll in likewise. The limpet which returns to its 

 home after a browsing excursion, must have some dim 

 memory or mental image of the place. 



So much, then, for proof of Imagination of the first 

 degree. Imagination of the second degree — or that wherein 

 one object or set of circumstances suggests another and 

 similar object or set of circumstances, occurs first, so far as 

 my evidence goes, among the Hymenoptera. But here the 

 cases of an association of ideas leading to the establishment 

 of a mental imagery more or less remote from the immediate 

 circumstances of perception are much too numerous to 

 quote. I shall therefore merely refer to the headings 

 " General Intelligence " in the chapters on Ants, Bees, and 

 "Wasps.* Among the higher animals imagination of this 

 grade is of frequent occurrence and strong force. Thus, to 

 supply only one example, Thompson, in his " Passions of 

 Animals " (p. 59), gives the case of a dog " which refused 

 dry bread, and was in the habit of receiving from his master 

 little morsels dipped in gravy of the meat remaining in the 

 plate, snapped eagerly after dry bread if he saw it rubbed 

 round the plate, and as, by way of experiment, this was re- 

 peatedly done till its hunger was satisfied, it is evident that 

 the imagination of the animal conquered for the time its 

 faculties of smell and taste." 



To this order of imagination also belongs the wariness of 

 wild animals. Thus Leroy, who in his capacity of Banger 

 had a large experience, says, " In the first hours of the night, 

 when the countenance of darkness is in itself a fertile source 

 of hope to the fox, the distant yelping of a dog will check 

 him in the midst of his career. All the dangers which he 

 has on various occasions passed through rise before him ; but 

 at dawn this extreme timidity is overborne by the calls of 



* Animal Intelligence, pp. 122-40, and 181-19. 



