The Dawn of Mind 229 



say that they never understand what they are doing. Yet it is 

 certain that trained animals often exhibit pieces of behaviour 

 which are not nearly so clever as they look. T"ie elephant at the 

 Belle Vue Gardens in Manchester used to collect pennies from 

 benevolent visitors. When it got a penny in its trunk it put it 

 in the slot of an automatic machine which delivered up a biscuit. 

 When a visitor gave the elephant a halfpenny it used to throw it 

 back with disgust. At first sight this seemed almost wise, and 

 there was no doubt some intelligent appreciation of the situation. 

 But it was largely a matter of habituation, the outcome of careful 

 and prolonged training. The elephant was laboriously taught to 

 put the penny in the slot and to discriminate between the useful 

 pennies and the useless halfpennies. It was not nearly so clever 

 as it looked. 



Using their Wits 



In the beautiful Zoological Park in Edinburgh the Polar 

 Bear was wont to sit on a rocky peninsula of a water-filled quarry. 

 The visitors threw in buns, some of which floated on the surface. 

 It was often easy for the Polar Bear to collect half a dozen by 

 plunging into the pool. But it had discovered a more interesting 

 way. At the edge of the peninsula it scooped the water gently 

 with its huge paw and made a current which brought the buns 

 ashore. This was a simple piece of behaviour, but it has the 

 smack of intelligence of putting two and two together in a novel 

 way. It suggests the power of making what is called a "percep- 

 tual inference." 



On the occasion of a great flood in a meadow it was observed 

 that a number of mares brought their foals to the top of a knoll, 

 and stood round about them protecting them against the rising 

 water. A dog has been known to show what was at any rate a 

 plastic appreciation of a varying situation in swimming across a 

 tidal river. It changed its starting-point, they say, according to 

 the flow or ebb of the tide. Arctic foxes and some other wild 



