The Homing Instinct 175 



which come to the dog, in its attempts to reach a certain 

 spot. On consulting several learned minds, there are some 

 interesting statements to be found by Mr. Romanes, amongst 

 others, on the subject of reason in human beings and in 

 animals, which suggest many possibilities to those who are 

 cultivating the homing instinct in dogs. In his book on 

 " Animal Intelligence " he says : 



" Reason is a faculty, which is concerned in the inten- 

 tional adaptation of means to ends. It therefore implies 

 the conscious knowledge of the relation between means 

 employed, and ends attained, and may be exercised in 

 adaptation to circumstances, novel alike to the experience 

 of the individual, and to that of the species. In other 

 words, it implies the power of perceiving analogies, or 

 ratios, and is in this sense equivalent to the term ' ratio- 

 cination,' or faculty of discerning inferences from a per- 

 ceived equivalency of relations." 



He then proceeds to follow this statement on Reason, 

 with an interesting discussion on the co-operation of the 

 mental quality of inference, in conjunction with that of 

 perception. To illustrate how closely these two qualities 

 are allied, Sir David Brewster is quoted as noticing the 

 fact, that when looking through a window, on the pane of 

 which there is a fly or gnat, if the eyes are adjusted for a 

 considerable distance, so that the gnat is not clearly 

 focussed, the mind at once infers, that it is a bird or some 

 much larger object, seen at a greater distance. " Now this 

 shows that in the case of all our visual perceptions, mental 

 inference is perpetually at work, compensating for the 

 effects of distance, in diminishing apparent size." We all 

 know also, how the sense of hearing is deceived in the same 

 manner, as when we hear a lesser sound near us, and infer 

 that it is a loud sound a long way off, and vice versa. 



