Mental Processes in Animals, 351 



must have a vague construct of the worm he hopes to have 

 a more particular acquaintance with ere long. The cobra 

 that I watched on the basal slopes of Table Mountain, and 

 that raised his head and expanded his hood when I pitched 

 a pebble on to the granite slope over which he was gliding, 

 must have had a vague percept suggested thereby. The 

 trout that leaps at your fly so soon as it touches the water 

 must have a vague percept of an eatable insect which 

 suggests his action. The carp* that come to the sound of 

 a bell must have, suggested by that sound, vague percepts 

 of edible crumbs. And no one who has watched as a lad 

 the fish swimming curiously round his bait can doubt that 

 they are by examination defining their percepts, and drawing 

 unsatisfactory inferences of a perceptual nature. 



And here let us notice that the whole set of phenomena 

 which have been described in previous chapters under the 

 heads of recognition-marks, of warning coloration, and of 

 mimicry, involve close and accurate powers of perception. 

 Kecognition-marks are developed for the special purpose 

 of enabling the organisms concerned rapidly and accurately 

 to form particular perceptual constructs. Of what use 

 would warning coloration be if it did not serve to suggest 

 to the percipient the disagreeable qualities with which it 

 is associated ? The very essence of the principle of mimicry 

 is that misleading associations are suggested. Here a 

 false construct, untrue to fact, that is to say, one that 

 verification would prove to be false, is formed ; just as a 

 well-executed imitation orange, in china or in soap, may 

 lead a child to form a false construct, one that is proved 

 to be incorrect so soon as the suggestions of sight are 

 submitted to verification by touch, smell, and taste. 



No one who has carefully watched the habits of birds 

 can have failed to notice how they submit a doubtful object 

 to examination. Probably the avoidance of insects pro- 

 tected by warning colours is not perfectly instinctive. I 



* Doubt has recently been thrown on this fact. Mr. Bateson has shown 

 that some fishes do not hear well, and has suggested that the carp may be 

 attracted by seeing people come to the edge of the pond. 



