124 



NATURE 



\_yune 5, 1879 



Several of the instances which your other correspondents 

 supplied, would, as Mr. Henslow himself admits, " if cor- 

 rectly stated, and if the motive of the animals could in 

 every case be proved, completely overthrow my supposi- 

 tion that animals never copy us with the same or a 

 rational purpose." And even if we allow, for the sake of 

 argument, that none of these instances have been 

 "correctly stated," yet there are such a multitude of 

 other instances on record of substantially the same kind, 

 that it is impossible to doubt that animals present the 

 beginnings of "mental reflection." Not to occupy too 

 much space, I shall confine myself to stating a few 

 instances which have not hitherto been put on record. 

 Mr. Henslow says, "Why is it that no dog ever (to my 

 knowledge, of course) observed a person ring a bell, 

 noticed that the bell brought the servant, and then went 

 through the process of reasoning — ' Because such was the 

 result I will ring the bell too ? ' This I call abstract 

 reasoning.' ' Well, Mr. Lawson Tait tells me that he has 

 a cat which, without having been taught, does precisely 

 what is here imagined. That is to say, when the cat 

 wants milk and cannot persuade the persons in the 

 sitting-room to supply her wants, she touches the bell, with 

 the evident purpose of attracting attention to her wants in 

 a more emphatic manner. The animal must have ob- 

 served that ringing the bell has the effect of calling the 

 servant, who sometimes brings milk, and therefore when 

 her solicitations are unheeded or misunderstood, she 

 makes a sign which conveys her meaning more con- 

 spicuously and more explicitly than she is able to make 

 with her voice. Although this is no doubt a very remark- 

 able case,^ it is really only a higher manifestation of the 

 faculties of observation, reflection, and communication 



thing from supposing a dog to be either a moral agent or a religious animal. 

 No one with an atom of common sense could entertain such a supposition for 

 a moment ; for morality and religion are among the highest products of 

 abstract thought. Some time ago I had to give a lecture on evolution at one 

 of our large provincial towns. Next Sunday the vicar told his congregation 

 that there could be no truth in the modern doctrine, and the reason he gave 

 had the merit of being boldly startling. " No one," he said, " had ever seen 

 ah ape pray." The answer to this profound argument is, that if any one 

 ever did witness such a spectacle, the fact would deal the heaviest of possible 

 blows against the theory of descent in the domain of psychology. A 

 religious monkey would be_ a phenomenon impossible to explain by any 

 scientific theory, so that — mimicry apart — if a naturalist were to see an orang 

 outang kneel down, clasp its hands, and raise its eyes to heaven, he could 

 only conclude that the animal was divinely — or diabolically — inspired. 



» On reading the praof of this article, it seemed to me desirable to obtain 

 more full information concerning this case, and, accordingly, I wrote to Mr. 

 Tait to furnish it. The following is extracted from his reply : — 



"The cat, a female, white, yellow eyes, absolutely deaf to all sounds'.'not 

 conveyed through solid media.was remarkably acute in the matter of sight, 

 and singularly intelligent, being a granddaughter of my begging cat." 

 [This was a cat which spontaneously adopted the habit of begging for food, 

 and transmitted the habit to her kittens, and her kittens* kittens. I have seen 

 one of these, now_ grown into a cat, which begs quite as well as any terrier ; 

 and the interesting fact is that all this family of begging kittens take to 

 begging spontaneously, independently alike of teaching .and of seeing their 

 mothers beg.] " When in the room with Mrs. Tait and myself, and feeling a 

 desire for milk, she first expressed tiitlt desire by peculiar cries, then by 

 sitting in front of us and begging like her grandmother, but not in such an 

 accomplished manner. This failing, she would go to the side of the fire- 

 place, and, standing on a foot-st jol, would pat watn her hand the knob of the 

 fire-place bell." [Of course, a cat, not having a properly prehensile hand, 

 could not actually ring such a bell.] *' This was never resisted, and as soon 

 as she saw the bell rung, she went towards the door at which the servant 

 would enter, and then waited in perfect confidence for the milk which she 

 brought She did not attempt to leave the rjom with the servant, but waited 

 patiently for her second coming. 



'• This cat was also reinarkabh as a fisher. She would wade into a small 

 pond up to the shoulder and catch fish — trench, goldfish, minnows, &c.-- 

 always fond of dabbling in water." 



I may here observe that cats seem to be more intelligent than dogs, at 

 least in understaitding_ special mechanisms. Thus it is not an unusual 

 thing for cats, while it is an unusual thing for dogs, to ask admittance to a 

 door by standing up on their hind legs and rattling the handle of the door 

 with their fore-legs. Also, among the immense number of letters that I have 

 received on the subject of animal intelligence, there is no one case narrated 

 of a dog, while_ there are several cases narrated of cAts jumping at knockers 

 on street doors in order to obtain admission to their masters' hojses. Simi- 

 larly, I have only received one instance of a dog, while I have received 

 several instances of cats jumping at thumb-latches for the purpo.se of opening 

 the doors which the latter fasten. I myself had a cat which was constantly 

 in the habit of entering the stables in this way. She used to spring at the 

 handle below the latch, and, while holding on to the handle with one fore-paw, 

 depress the latch with the other, and kick the door-post with her hind-legs 

 in order to push the door open while she held the latch down. This compli- 

 cated action can only be explained by supposing that the cat observed how 

 her human friends manipulated a thumb-latch, reasoning that she might do 

 likewise, and experimenting until she succeeded. 



by signs, which in lower degrees are met with in many 

 animals. Thus, I myself had a terrier which used to 

 express all his desires — even the sexual — by the same 

 sign, that of " begging ; " but he was able to make this 

 general sign of desire express the particular thing 

 desired by the manner in which he performed the 

 sign. Thus, for instance, if he wanted water, he 

 used to go to a wash-hand stand, or other place 

 where he had observed that water was kept, and beg with 

 his face towards the water-jug. I adduce this instance 

 because, while it involves the manifestation of the three 

 faculties above-named, it does so in a comparatively low 

 degree, and therefore serves a stepping-stone to their 

 higher manifestation in such instances as that of Mr. 

 Tait's cat. There is nothing so very extraordinary in a dog 

 observing that water is frequently poured out of a certain 

 jug, and reflecting, " I can make my thirst known to my 

 master by begging towards the jug." Yet this involves 

 the same faculties of mind as does the ringing of a bell 

 for a servant as a sign for desiring milk — the only differ- 

 ence between the two cases consisting in the more direct 

 nature of the association and rational sign. Water, 

 Water-jug, Begging towards water-jug, than of the asso- 

 ciation and rational sign, Milk, Servant a milk-bearer 

 summoned by bell-pulling. Pulling bell to summon ser- 

 vant. Thus, so long as we have abundant evidence of 

 the presence in animals of the faculties of observation 

 and reflection in a low degree, we need not, as evolution- 

 ists, be over-solicitous to meet with the presence of these 

 faculties in a higher degree, although as a matter of com- 

 parative psychology it is of interest that the highest 

 degree to which such faculties attain in various species of 

 animals should be ascertained. Among the instances 

 which have been published in Nature, perhaps the most 

 remarkable is that communicated by Dr. Frost — the case, I 

 mean, of the cat sprinkling crumbs to entice birds. I would 

 suggest that Dr. Frost ought to supply more particulars 

 as to where the cat obtained the crumbs, whether or not 

 she had to carry them, and if so, to what distance, how she 

 scattered them, and generally to furnish all the informa- 

 tion that he can. So extraordinary does this case appear, 

 that it ought to be stated with all possible minuteness. I 

 have indeed met with alleged cases of precisely similar 

 ingenuity— one displayed by a fox, another by a bear, 

 and so on ; but some well-observed instance is required 

 to render these similar instances in any degree credible. 

 Dr. Klein has told me of a case which resembles that of 

 Dr. Frost's cat up to a certain point. For Dr. Klein 

 satisfied himself that the cat he observed had estaWished 

 a definite association between crumbs already sprinkled 

 on the garden-walk and sparrows coming to eat them ; 

 for as soon as the crumbs were sprinkled on the walk the 

 cat used to conceal herself from the walk in a neighbour- 

 ing shrubbery, there to await in ambush the coming of 

 the birds. The latter, however, after all, showed them- 

 selves more wideawake than the cat, for there was a wall 

 running behind the shrubbery, from the top of which the 

 birds could see the cat in her supposed concealment, and 

 there a long line of sparrows used to wait, watching the 

 cat and the crumbs at the same time, but never venturing 

 to fly down to the latter until the former, wearied with 

 waiting, went away. In this case the observation and 

 reasoning of the cat — Crumbs attract birds, therefore I 

 will wait for birds where crumbs are scattered — was as 

 complete as in the case of Dr. Frost's cat ; but the rea- 

 soning in the latter case seems to have proceeded a stage 

 further — therefore I will scatter crumbs to attract birds. 

 And just because it is so rare a thing to find an animal 

 taking this further step in reasoning — the step, I mean, 

 from passive expectation to active adjustment— I think that 

 Dr. Frost ought to be requested to supply more detailed 

 information. 



As further evidence of " mental reflection " by animals, 

 I may give a few additional instances. 



