26 DOGS 



sideways, perhaps, for five minutes on his rump without 

 inconvenience, and, in his observation of other objects, 

 forgetting after a while the original purpose of his solicita- 

 tion. 



IV 



In the very interesting article entitled " Do Animals 

 Reason?" in your issue of June 5 you cite a paradox of 

 Mr. Brewster's which reminds me of a scene which 

 occurred when Charles (afterwards Lord) Bowen was 

 examined viva voce at Oxford. He quoted an Aristotelian 

 saying to the effect that " beasts have no knowledge of 

 first principles " ; he spoke in that deprecatory and quasi- 

 interrogative voice of his which made a wag say of him 

 that, as a Judge, he addressed the jury " as if he were 

 asking them to dance with him." And I well remember 

 the titter which the truism, thus dubitatively pronounced, 

 excited among the listening undergraduates. 



I once questioned my friend Romanes about one or more 

 strange animal instincts, and his answers confirmed the 

 surprise which I had felt on reading his " Animal Intelli- 

 gence." He spoke of the newly hatched cuckoo, whose 

 physical shape as well as his cruel instinct seem to be 

 adapted by nature for the express purpose of throwing his 

 foster-brothers out of the nest to die of cold and hunger. 

 Romanes defines certain forms of instinct as " lapsed in- 

 telligence ' ' as manifested , that is , in automatic acts in- 

 herited from intelligent acts of remote ancestors. But 

 how, one may ask, can such lapses have arisen without 

 previous degeneration, and what can natural selection, 

 sexual selection, and the other factors (if such there are) 

 of the survival of the fittest, have been about when they 

 allowed such degeneration ? It may be worth adding two 

 incidents reported by Romanes : 



" Our servants have been accustomed during the late 

 frost to throw the crumbs remaining from the breakfast- 



