ANIMAL KATIOCINATION 27 



table to the birds, and I have several times noticed that 

 our cat used to wait there in ambush in the expectation of 

 obtaining a hearty meal from one or two of the assembled 

 birds. Now, so far, this circumstance in itself is not an 

 ' example of abstract reasoning.' But to continue. For 

 the last few days this practice of feeding the birds has been 

 left off. The cat, however, with an almost incredible 

 amount of forethought, was observed by myself, together 

 with two other members of the household, to scatter 

 crumbs on the grass with the obvious intention of enticing 

 the birds. . . . Rengger described a monkey employing a 

 stick wherewith to prise up the lid of a chest, which was 

 too heavy for the animal to raise otherwise. This use of 

 a lever as a mechanical instrument is an action to which 

 no animal other than the monkey has ever been known 

 to attain." 



In my boyhood it was an axiom that beasts had nothing 

 beyond instinct, and that the reason of man was the 

 presage of his immortality. In opposition to this view, 

 Max Miiller remarked that parrots judge by the weight 

 of a nut whether it has or has not a kernel, and that this 

 is an act of comparison. My (once) distinguished tutor, 

 the Rev. W. E. Jelf , went further, in an odd way, on the 

 animal side ; for he held that the Divine Omniscience , 

 being intuitive and independent of logic, partook of the 

 nature rather of instinct than of reason. Such an 

 apotheosis of instinct sheds a mysterious halo over animal 

 intelligence. Is not this halo conspicuous in Virgil's 

 beautiful line which says of the bewildering instinct of 

 bees that instinct which still seems to us so marvellous 

 after all the explanations of Darwin that it has in it a 

 god-sent nay, a god-like ingredient (Esse apibus partem 

 divince mentis et haustus JEtherios) ? 



LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE. 



June 12, 1909. 



