166 INTELLIGENT BEHAVIOUR 
moistened with quinine was placed. On other plain slips 
meal moistened with water was provided. The young birds 
soon learnt to avoid the bitter meal, and then would not touch 
plain meal if it were offered on the banded slip. And these 
birds, save in two instances, refused to touch cinnabar cater- 
pillars, which were new to their experience. They did not, 
like other birds, have to learn by particular trials that these 
caterpillars are unpleasant. Their experience had already been 
gained through the banded glass slips; orso it seemed. I have 
also found that young birds who had learnt to avoid cinnabar 
caterpillars left wasps untouched. Such observations must 
be repeated and extended. But they seem to show that 
one aspect of the Miillerian theory is not without some facts 
in support of it; and, so far as they go, they afford evidence 
that black and orange banding, irrespective of particular 
form, may constitute a guiding generic feature in the conscious 
situation. 
It may be said that the generic condensation of experience 
here indicated implies the formation of general and abstract 
ideas, and that we cannot in face of the evidence accept 
Locke’s dictum that abstraction is “an excellency which the 
faculties of brutes do by no means attain to.” Romanes 
contended * that “all the higher animals have general ideas of 
‘ rood-for-eating ’ and ‘ not-good-for-eating ’ quite apart from 
any particular objects of which either of these qualities happens 
to be characteristic,” and he quoted with approval Leroy’s 
statement,{ that a fox ‘“ will see snares when there are none ; 
his imagination, distorted by fear, will produce deceptive 
shapes, to which he will attach an abstract notion of danger.” 
According to such views animals form concepts ; and concepts 
belong to the sphere of rational thought. It is not my inten- 
tion to enter at length into the refinements of psychological 
distinction. Many psychologists, however, seek to distinguish 
between, on the one hand, the predominance by natural 
emphasis, of certain qualities, such as that of being suitable for 
* « Mental Evolution in Man,” p. 27. 
t “Intelligence of Animals,” p. 121, 
