I4th March, A. D. 1895. 



ESSAY 



BY 



Professor E. HARLOW RUSSELL, 



State Normal School, Worcester, Mass. 



Theme : — Animal Intelligence. 



When we apply ourselves to the study of the orders of lower auimal 

 life, I thiuk we are impressed with two things. First, the prodigious 

 number and variety of forms in which animal life is seen jipon this 

 earth. There is an enormous range and variety in the structure of the 

 auimal world. Then, again, comes the correspondingly great range of 

 what we may call intelligence, or something which, by a stretching of 

 the definition, may be termed that. It ranges from what we may call 

 zero, where the animal life is hardly more than that found in the vege- 

 table, through our domestic animals, as the cat and dog, up to the 

 monkey and ape, which approach most neai'ly our own structure and 

 our own intelligence. Then there are forms of life that have a great 

 amount of intelligence, only of a different variety. In this class we 

 include the ant, bee and wasp. I believe that it is a fact that no less 

 than eighty thousand kinds of beetles have been described, classified 

 and catalogued, and yet the insect world has not been at all 

 thoroughly canvassed. 



In comparing the intelligence of animals and men, we cannot avoid 

 comparison as regards the higher animals, there are so many points 

 that are analogous ; and when it comes to intelligence they accord with 

 us in a great many respects. You well know how savages look upon 

 animals. In many cases they exalt them above men and maintain that 

 they derive their family descent from certain lines. There is undoubt- 

 edly a fixed belief on the part of Indians and savages that souls of 

 men pass and repass between animals and men as a sort of retribution 

 for sins committed during life. 



