CHAPTER III. 



AUTHENTICITY OF ANECDOTES OF ANIMAL SAGACITY. 



IT must be obvious it requires no argument surely to show 

 that anecdotes of animal ' instinct ' or intelligence are only 

 of value they can be used as the basis of sound inferences, 

 conclusions, or generalisations, only if or when they are true 

 or authentic, or can be relied upon as representations of 

 actual facts. To be of service there must be no doubt of 

 their truthfulness. 



Unfortunately, however, even of the endless volumes of 

 such anecdotes that have been published in our own language 

 and in our own country, a large proportion is valueless for 

 the purposes of science, because we are furnished with no 

 proper guarantee that the incidents as described actually 

 occurred. Either the names of the observers or recorders 

 are not given, or they are those of unknown persons, for 

 whose veracity of whose capacity for observing, narrating, 

 or describing accurately even the simplest facts we have 

 no sort of voucher. In other cases the narrative is clothed 

 in the garb of fiction, or there is a certain amount of 

 poetical or sensational amplification, so as to make the 

 record read like a '.story ; ' and though perhaps in all, and 

 no doubt at least in many, cases the fiction has been founded 

 on fact, it is impossible to distinguish the one from the 

 other. 



This being the case, I have set aside in my own enquiries 

 all anecdotes that did not bear, or appear to bear, the stamp 

 of truthfulness or authenticity either in their authorship or 

 in the incidents themselves, or in both. I have been led 

 to prefer for my data modern or recent incidents, described 

 for the most part by living persons of acknowledged com- 



