366 Animal Life and Intelligence. 



work ; he sees the right thing to do, though he cannot tell 

 you why it should be done. Now, B is a very different 

 man ; he is slow, but he reasons everything out. A knows 

 the right thing to do ; and B can tell you why it must be 

 done. A has the keenest intelligence, but B the clearest 

 reasoning faculty. If I have occasion to question them 

 about any mechanical contrivance, A says, ' Let me see it 

 work ; ' but B says, * Let me think it out.' " 



In other words, A, the intelligent man, deals with 

 phenomena as wholes, and his perceptual inferences are 

 rapid and exact ; while B, the reasoner, analyzes the 

 phenomena, and draws conceptual inferences about them. 



Let us take next Dr. Rae's* most interesting description 

 of the cunning of Arctic foxes. These clever animals, he 

 tells us, soon learn to avoid the ordinary steel and wooden 

 traps. The Hudson Bay trappers, therefore, set gun-traps. 

 The bait is laid on the snow, and connected with the 

 trigger of the gun by a string fifteen or twenty feet long, 

 five or six inches of slack being left to allow for contraction 

 from moisture. The fox, on taking up the bait, discharges 

 the gun and is shot. But, after one or more foxes have 

 been shot, the cunning beasts often adopt one of two 

 devices. Either they gnaw through the string, and then 

 take the bait ; or they tunnel in the snow at right angles 

 to the line of fire, and pull the bait downwards, thus dis- 

 charging the gun, but remaining uninjured. This is 

 regarded by Dr. Rae as a wonderful instance of " abstract 

 reasoning." 



Here, again, it is the "abstract reasoning" that I 

 question. Do the clever foxes resemble the intelligent 

 workman A, or the abstract reasoner B? I believe that 

 their actions are the result of perceptual inferences. They 

 adopt their cunning devices after one or more foxes have 

 been shot. Their keen perceptions (let me repeat that the 

 perceptions of wild animals are extraordinarily keen) lead 

 them to see that this food, quiet as it seems, has to be 

 taken with caution. 



* " Animal Intelligence," p. 430 ; and Nature, vol. xix. p. 409. 



