Fer 24, 1882.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



361 



results of tliis treatment do not appear to have been iletriniental 

 eitker to health or intellect ; and although the weakly, in all proba- 

 Ijility, died early, those who sur%'ived, inured to pain and endurance 

 from the cradle, grew up hardy and able to bear suffering, which 

 would soon kill our more tenderly-nurtured and abnormally-sensitive 

 children. These curious facts seem to me worthy of more attention 

 than they have hitherto received from medical men ami psycho- 

 logists, and I trust some of the readers of Knowledge may be 

 induced by this imperfect and too short description to investigate 

 this ven;- curious subject. A. W. BrcKL.\ND. 



INTELLIGENCE IN ANIMALS. 



AT one time our family rejoiced in the possession of five cats. 

 One, a magnificent black animal, assumed the air and dignity 

 of chief amongst them, and was deferred to on all occasions by the 

 other members of the feline community. One day I detected him 

 in the commission of an outrageous attack on a juvenile member 

 of the fraternity, and at once expressed my disapprobation in a 

 most vigorous manner, chasing the culprit about the room, under 

 chairs and tables, till he suddenly disappeared. 



I listened a moment to catch any sound that might betray his 

 whereabouts, and suddenly heard the latch of the kitchen-door fall. 

 I rushed into the kitchen just in time to see Tom slide his forepaw 

 between the door and the jamb, forcing the door open and leajnng 

 out into the garden, thence on to the top of a high wall, from which 

 " bad eminence " he regarded me with a placid and unctuous look of 

 injured innocence. 



He had opened the door by jumping on to a small shelf near, from 

 whence, by standing up on his hind legs, he could reach the latch 

 and push it up with his forepaw, thus releasing the door, which then 

 svning partially open. The rest, to a cat of " Sweep's " intelligence, 

 was easy. I often afterwards watched him do it. He never suc- 

 ceeded (though he often tried) in opening the door from the outside, 

 because there was nothing sufficiently near the latch on which he 

 could stand while he pressed the thumb-piece of the latch downwards, 

 u proceeding the necessity for which he evidently thoroughly under- 

 stood, as evidenced by the way in which his attempts to open the door 

 from the outside were made. He would leap up and catch hold of 

 the latch-guard with one paw, while with the other he frantically 

 struck (downwards) at the thumb-piece, continuing his efforts till 

 his strength for the moment failed him, and he dropped to the 

 ground. 



He never asked anyone to open the door for him. If he wanted 

 to go out, he opened it and went out ; if he wanted to come in, he 

 tried to open it, and continued trj'ing (the idea of ultimate failure 

 never, apparently, entering his head) till the noise of his successive 

 failures attracted notice and brought help. JoHX Humphrey. 



We had several times been annoyed by joints of meat having 

 been gnawed, and often found on the floor of the cellar ; of course, 

 the cat, about three-quarters grown, was rightly blamed as being 

 the delinquent. The maid repeatedly denied having left the cellar 

 door open, but was for some time disbelieved, and I am sorry to 

 say blamed, until one night, going into the kitchen after the 

 family had retired, I found pussy, naught abashed, busily pa-sving 

 away at the thumb-piece of the latch. I left her for a short time, 

 and on returning found the cellar door open, and pussy busy with 

 the meat. On examination I found the door would immediately 

 swing open on the lever of the latch being pressed. Next day I 

 had a spring put to the latch, and, needless to say, pussy has not 

 troubled since, though it is not for want of trying. She still lets 

 herself into the kitchen from the garden — the onter-door having a 

 similar latch, climbing up the verandah until level i\-ith the latch, 

 and pawing awav industriously until the door swings open. 



\V. M. 



Anisul Instincts. — A lady, daughter of a neighbour of mine, 

 married to a Russian, and who travelled with him and resided some 

 time in Eastern Siberia, told me an anecdote of some swallows, 

 which she said were building their nests under the verandah of 

 their domicile there. One of the nests, when about completed, was 

 found on the return of the builders to be occupied by a sparrow, 

 whom they in vain tried to eject. On finding their efforts fruitless, 

 they started off to the neighbouring river, from whose banks they 

 acquired their plastic material, and in numbers proceeded at once 



to fill up the hole into the nest. In the evening, Madame S a's 



husband, by mounting a ladder, found they had completely filled it 

 up, and he at once, with his fingers, re-opened the hole so as to 

 allow breathing space to the little occupant. Alas! in the morning, 

 when they came to breakfast, he found the hole refilled, and the 

 bird inside quite dead from suffocation. — T. H. Morgan. 



artttrs to tf)e €M6i\ 



[^The Editor doen not hold him»e{f rft^onttihU for the opinions ofhtji correfpondenfa. 

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 ments of the writer's meani77g.~] 



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 the day qf publication. 



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"In knowledge, that man only is to be contemned and despieed who is not in a 



Btate of transition Nor is there anything more adverse to accuracy 



ihan fixity of opinion." — Faraday. 



"There is no harm in making a mistake, but great harm in making none. Show 

 me a man who makee no mistakes, and I will ahow you a man who has done 

 nothing." — Liebia. 



" God's Orthodoxy i:^ Truth."— CT^t-??* Eingxley. 



0\\x Corrf<jpon)3rnre Columufif. 



ERRATUM.— WEATHER FORECASTS.— MESMERISM.— ICE. 

 — SHORTENING OF THE DAY.— FOSSILS IX METEOR- 

 ITES.— THE ATOMIC THEORY.— HISTORY OF NATURAL 

 PHILOSOPHY. — BAROMETRIC OSCILLATIONS. — VEGE- 

 TARIANISM.~THE POLAR SUN.— LECTURES. 

 [285] — I must, begin by correcting a remarkable compositor'.s 

 error in the ninth line of the second paragraph of my letter (255) 

 on p. 206, as I there find " 2,141,956 miles," where I most certainly 

 wrote 21 1,956 ; on tlie whole, a very decidedly shorter distance. 



Either the author of letter 256 (p. 296) must contribute infini- 

 tesimally to the taxes, or, like the Scotchman in the parable, he 

 must be '* thankfu' for sma' maircies," if he is satisfied with the 

 return which the British nation receives for the annual sum of 

 £15,000 expended on so-called " Meteorology." Were pjivment to 

 Victoria-street and the Royal Society Committee made by results, 

 I have an abiding conviction that a very considerably less sum 

 would appear in the estimates next April. 



I should strongly recommend *' A Startled One " (letter 260, 

 p. 301) to obtain a little book by the late Mr. Braid, of Manchester, 

 entitled " Magic, Witchcraft, Animal Magnetism, Hypnotism, and 

 Electro-Biology." It was published by Churchills in 1852, and is 

 now out of print ; but I should think that a copy might be obtained 

 through a second-hand bookseller. Your correspondent may also 

 read Carpenter's *' Mental Physiology " (H. S. King »t Co.) with 

 profit. 



Will " An Engineer " (letter 262, p. 301) forgive me for saying 

 that I made no "slip" in the sentence which he quotes. All I 

 meant to imply was that ice did not vary in the .<?ame ivay as other 

 solids do with change of temperature — not that it did not so vary 

 at all. I should say just the same thing of bismuth, antimony, and 

 cast-iron. 



"A Geologist" (letter 263, p. 301) appears to labotir under the 

 impression that the rate of the earth's rotation is dependent in some 

 fashion upon her internal temperature. The most probable efficient 

 cause of the lengthening of the day is, however, the friction of the 

 tidal wave upon the earth's surface, as this must really retard her 

 diurnal rotation on her axis, and produce the effect of a brake. A a 

 the Editor points out in his own note, unless we admit that the day 

 is lengthening (at the rate of about ten seconds in 100 years) at 

 least half of the apparent lunar acceleration is unaccounted for. 



I have never seen the "Poetry of Astronomy," and so am ignorant 

 of the line of argument pursued therein by its author with reference 



