16 GEOBGE JOHN ROMANES 



At Dunskaith a little laboratory was fitted up in 

 an adjoining cottage, and here during the summer 

 Mr. Eomanes worked constantly for some years, diver- 

 sifying his labours by shooting. It was in his country 

 home also that he began those series of observations 

 on animals which he worked up into the < Animal 

 Intelligence ' of the International Scientific Series, 

 perhaps the most popular of his books. The terrier 

 Mathal was his special companion, and he observed 

 various traits of her intelligence which are recorded 

 in < Mental Evolution in Animals,' pp. 156, 157, 158. 

 It was also at Dunskaith that he began his first 

 attempts at verse making, but for some years these 

 did not come to much. 



His scientific work at Dunskaith led to a paper 

 communicated to the Royal Society in 1875, and 

 entitled ' Preliminary Observations on the Locomotor 

 System of Medusae.' 



This paper the Royal Society honoured by making 

 it the Croonian Lecture, an honour awarded to the 

 best biological paper of each year. 



And he also communicated a paper to the Royal 

 Society entitled, ' The Influence of Injury on the 

 Excitability of Motor Nerves.' Of this paper Pro- 

 fessor Burdon Sanderson says that the observations 

 were made with great care, and that the new facts 

 recorded have been fully confirmed by later observers. 

 This work was done at Cambridge. 



Mr. Romanes had worked for two years, or rather 

 two summers, very constantly and very strenuously 

 on the Medusae. He set himself to try to discover 

 whether or not the rudiments of a nervous system 

 existed in these creatures. Agassiz had maintained it 

 did, others considered his deductions premature, and 

 Huxley, in his ' Classification of Animals,' summed 



