June 12, 1879] 



NATURE 



147 



A Meteor and the Weather in New Caledonia 



According to my promise to send you accounts of any re- 

 markable meteors that I may see here, I now notify one which 

 appeared yesterday evening, April 13, at 20 minutes past 6 p.m. 

 We were driving slowly home from Ansevata, near Noumea, 

 when a splendid brilliant pure white meteor fell from the zenith, 

 about 30°, quite perpendicularly and slowly. It burst into three 

 pieces, and instantly disappeared. From Noumea its direction 

 was due south, and in size it appeared four or five times larger 

 than Venus. We heard no noise ; the sound of the carriage 

 wheels grinding on the road would have prevented any but a 

 rather loud one being audible. It was not dark, but twilight. 



We have been suffering much from unusual heat, and the 

 atmosphere is surcharged with electricity. Heavy storms brew 

 in the mountains, but we have been free from them here in 

 Noumea. Heavy rain squalls gather to the southward, and on 

 reaching the south point of New Caledonia either divide and run 

 along the mountains on one side or the circling reef on the other, 

 or also pass solidly in either direction, leaving the peninsula of 

 Noumea perfectly dry. E. L. Layard 



Brit. Consulate, Noumea, April 14 



Intellect in Brutes: 



Mr. Romanes has alluded to some of the peculiarities of my 

 feline pets, but really those are by no means the most striking 

 instances of their intelligence. My wife and I are devotedly 

 fond of our cats, so much so as to afford amusement to our 

 friends, and we are never tired of expatiating on their indications 

 of intelligence. A pedigree book is kept, and any reader of 

 Nature desirous of possessing a kitten of an intelligent stock is 

 welcome to one on three or four months' notice. 



I wish to give one other story of them which seems to show 

 that they are apt to indulge in revenge and to act in systematic 

 co-operation to accomplish it. They are of very cleanly habits, 

 and, save under the circumstances about to be narrated, have 

 never given any trouble in this respect. But some time ago we 

 had a visitor who had a strong and very badly-concealed dislike 

 to them. The dislike was quite mutual. Very soon after the 

 arrival of this visitor the cats became very objectionable on 

 account of messes, and these were concentrated in and near the 

 bedroom occupied by the object of their aversion. Their 

 insanitary proceedings became so pronounced that it almost 

 appeared as if they had invited all their feline friends in the 

 neighbourhood to join in the establishment of a "night-soil tip." 

 No amount of correction, aided by pepper of the most pungent 

 kind, could stop it, and I most reluctantly determined upon a 

 wholesale felicide. The visitor departed, however, before this 

 was carried into effect, and immediately the nuisance ceased, 

 and our cats resumed their original cleanly habits. 



Lawson Tait 



I HAVE perused with interest the admirable summary of the 

 " Animal Intelligence " question by Mr. Romanes. On reading 

 the article in question, it occurred to me that I had at hand some 

 memoranda concerning animal intelligence which bear on the 

 presence, not merely of abstract reasoning in dogs, but also upon 

 the presence in dogs of traits of character remarkably resembling 

 those we are accustomed to name "retaliation " and " revenge" 

 in man. I now send you the jottings in question, obtained, I 

 may add, from personal friends. About thirteen years ago, a 

 now deceased medical man residing near Edinburgh, possessed 

 a favourite collie, "Cheviot" by name. The incident I am 

 about to relate, I may mention, was related to me by the son 

 of the gentleman in question, both father and son, along 

 with a perfectly disinterested party, having corroborated the 

 facts. The then provost of the burgh in which J," Cheviot" 

 resided, had issued an interdict against unmuzzled dogs during 

 the "dog days," and " Cheviot" submitted with no good grace 

 to the operation of securing his jaws. I'Vequently " Cheviot's " 

 master and the members of the family spoke in the dog's hearing, 

 in no measured terras of the cruelty of the provost's order. But 

 the end of the "dog days" came, and " Cheviot's" muzzle was 

 removed. On the afternoon of the day of liberation, the provost 

 called on "Cheviot's" master, to say, that in the morning he 

 had heard a dog whining at his front door. The provost opened 

 the door; " Cheviot " was in waiting, his muzzle in his mouth. 

 One look at the provost, and the muzzle was dropped at his feet, 

 "Cheviot " scampering off in the highest glee, as if delighted to 

 have had the opportunity of laying the cause of his grievance at 

 the door of his enemy. 



The details were vouched for by the provost himself, also a 

 medical practitioner in the burgh. 



Here it seems to me you possess an incident of dog character 

 explicable only on the supposition that thee are germs in the 

 canine philosophy of acts and traits fully developed in ours. 



Incident number two deals with the doings of a retriever, 

 some four or five years old, who, whilst bearing an implacable 

 enmity to felines at large, had struck up a close friendship with 

 a household cat, which, from kittenhood, had been associated 

 with him. For sanitary reasons the cat was condemned to die. 

 According to the orthodox method, puss was placed in a sack 

 weighted with stones, and carried to the sea, " Keeper," the dog, 

 following in the wake of the procession. The cat was duly 

 thrown into the sea, "Keeper" waited to see if it would rise, 

 but on seeing no signs of his feline friend, he at once dived for 

 the sack, and landed it at an adjacent pier. Being met by the 

 executioners and divining that puss was yet in danger, ' ' Keeper " 

 re-entered the water, sack in mouth, and swam across the bay to 

 a point of safety, and landed his burden. Puss was spared in 

 deference to " Keeper's " anxiety. 



I can find still another example of extreme unselfishness in a 

 mongrel dog, who, for some years before the death of an old 

 deaf and blind companion, was accustomed to proceed to his 

 resting-place, and bark in his ear to warn him of the presence 

 near at hand of the milk which the kindly hand of the mistress 

 of the house was accustomed to place for the delectation of both. 

 This proceeding was repeated day by day, with unvarying regu- 

 larity, and ii7 its nature suggests strongly that the exercise of 

 self-denial — iiDiidst the obvious temptation of an easy acquire- 

 ment of luxury — has to be placed to the credit account of the 

 canine race. Andrew Wilson 



Edinburgh Medical School, June 6 



With reference to the article in Nature of 5th June, permit 

 me to narrate an instance of "abstract reasoning " in a retriever' 

 that I was witness to last autumn. **>' 



Having shot a hare so slightly as to make it a long chase for 

 the dog (a young one), I watched the retriever follow the hare 

 over the open hills of Aberdeenshire for upwards of two miles 

 until the chase was lost to view under a stone dyke. In a few 

 moments the dog was observed to carry something in his mouth 

 with which he disappeared over the dyke into a turnip field. 

 " He has killed the hare and he is too tired to bring it back, so 

 he is burying it," quoth the keeper, "we shall come up with it 

 in the evening." The day's sport over, we made for the dog's 

 bury ing ground , but the retriever, if you please, knew nothing 

 about it ; and careered wildly about in every direction except the 

 right one. The keeper, Henry Ledingham of Tarland, Aboyne, 

 having a remarkable gift of spotting fallen game, actually put his 

 foot on the very spot among the turnips where the burial had occur- 

 red. After immense affectation of surprise the retriever was forced 

 to unearth the hare. The hare, however, was a rotten old carcass 

 of a hare, with no eyes and teeth, that the retriever had picked 

 up and buried to save himself the pains of following the live 

 hare. Perfectly conscious of his misdeed, the dog had given evi- 

 dence of abstract reasoning in each stage of the transaction. 

 Charles Baillie Hamilton 



St. Stephen's Club, Westminster, June 10 



I have followed the discussion in your columns on "In- 

 tellect in Bmtes" attentively, and I maintain that Mr. 

 Henslow's distinction between man's power of abstract 

 reasoning, and the reasoning of animals from oljects pre- 

 sent to the senses (a faculty they certainly possess, if the 

 theory of deductive reasoning, that all inference is from par- 

 ticulars to particulars be accepted, which, however, cannot be 

 proved), is perfectly valid, in spite of any accidental errors of 

 illustration. 



The fact that a cat or a dog subject their food to examination 

 before eating it, does not most assuredly prove the possession of 

 abstract powers of thought in the animal. Mr. Romanes here 

 says: — "The motive of the examination being to ascertain 

 which general idea of quality is appropriate to the particular 

 object examined." 



Here he attributes to an animal whose nature he does not fully 

 understand his own process of thought, and this appears to me 

 to be a constant source of eiTor in the investigation of ammal 

 psychology. That brutes possess self-consciousness, introspection, 

 imagination, abstract thought, cannot, I think, be proved. The 



