224 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 



the terrier began to bound like a cat, and to roll a mouse or 

 a ball with his fore-paws ; he also licked his paws and 

 rubbed them over his ears. Yet if a strange cat came into 

 the garden he chased it away.* Prichard gives another case 

 of a dog reared by a cat learning to lick its paws and wash 

 its face,f and a precisely similar case is communicated to me 

 by Mrs. M. A. Baines. Another precisely similar case I find 

 recorded in Mr. Darwin's MSS as communicated to him by 

 Professor Hoffmann of Giessen. Again, the late Dr. Routh, 

 President of Magdalen College, Oxford, observed that his 

 King Charles terrier (which had been suckled and reared by 

 a cat from the age of three days) was as afraid of rain as was 

 the foster-mother ; that he would never, if he could possibly 

 avoid it, set his paw in a wet place ; that he licked his feet 

 two or three times a day for the purpose of washing his face, 

 which process he performed " in the true cattish position, 

 sitting upon his tail ;" that " he used to watch a mouse-hole 

 for hours together ;" and had " in short all the ways, manners, 

 and dispositions of his wet-nurse. "J Lastly, another case is 

 recorded in " Nature "§ of a dog belonging to Mr. C. H. Jeens, 

 which, having been reared by a cat from the age of one 

 month, used to catch mice, and when it caught one to treat 

 it " after the well-known manner of cats, allowing it to run a 

 distance, then pouncing upon it, and so on for many minutes." 

 Conversely Dr. E. Darwin records the case of a cat learning 

 from a dog the medicinal use of the herb Agrostis canina. I 

 think it is probable that the following facts, which I quote 

 from Mr. Darwin's MSS, are also, in part at least, to be 

 attributed to imitation, though here the imitation is within 

 the limits of the same species. 



" It has been stated that lambs turned out without their 

 mothers are very liable to eat poisonous herbs ; and it seems to 

 be certain that cattle, when first introduced into a country, are 

 killed by eating poisonous herbs which the cattle already 

 naturalized there have learnt to avoid."|| 



It seems needless to give further instances of imitation 



* Anns, des Sc. Nat., torn, xxii, p. 388. 



f Nat. Hist, of Mankind, 3rd ed., vol. i, p. 102. 



X Miss Mitl'ord's Life and Letters, vol. ii, p. 277. 



§ Nature, vol. viii, p. 79. 



|| See Annls. and May. of Nat. Hist. 2nd ser., vol. ii, p. 364; and 

 Slillinrjfieet's Tracts, p. 350. In regard to Lambs, see Yonatt on Sheep, 

 p. 404. 



