MIND UNDER WATER. 177 



impenetrable nature of the glass plate and its position 

 is not the least indication of lack of intelligence. In 

 daily life we constantly see people do things they have 

 observed injure them, and yet, in spite of experience, 

 go and do the same again. 



The glass experiment proves to me that the jack, 

 like all other creatures, really has a latent power of 

 intelligence beyond that brought into play by the 

 usual circumstances of existence. Consider the con- 

 ditions under which the jack exists — the jack we 

 have been approaching so carefully. His limits are 

 the brook, the ponds it feeds, and the ditches that 

 enter it. He can only move a short distance up the 

 stream because there is a high hatch, nor can he go 

 far down because of a mill ; if he could, the conditions 

 would be much the same ; but, as a matter of fact, 

 the space he has at his command is not much. The 

 running water, the green flags, the lesser fishes, the 

 Avater-rats, the horses and cattle on the bank — these 

 are about all the things that he is likely to be inte- 

 rested in. Of these only the water, the lesser fishes, 

 the flags, and the bottom or sides of the brook, are 

 actually in his touch and complete understanding. 

 As he is unable to live out of water, the horse on the 

 bank, in whose very shadow he sometimes lies, might 

 be a mile away for aught it concerns him. By no 

 possible means can he discover anything about it. 

 The horse may be itself nothing more than a shadow, 

 unless in a shallow place he steps in and splashes. 

 Night and day he knows, the cool night, and the 

 sunbeams in which he basks; but he has no way of 

 ascertaining the nature of anything outside the 



N 



