126 STUPIDITY. 



perly regarded as an incarnation of intelligence and industry 

 the ant. According to Huber, certain Amazon ants are so 

 dependent for the supply of even their physical needs and 

 domestic comforts on their slaves, that they are reduced to 

 abject helplessness in the absence of the latter, ' being quite 

 unable to provide for their (own) comforts, even in the midst 



of abundance No work whatever was done 



Many had already died ' (Pouchet). 



The sagacious elephant in India sometimes charges rail- 

 way trains, thereby mutilating itself grievously and unne- 

 cessarily, while the rest of the herd look on ' in a dazed and 

 stupid kind of a way' (Wood). But here we have again 

 evidently the result of inexperience and ignorance. The 

 animal has not yet learned in its own way that the railway 

 engine is an enemy of a kind with which it need not venture 

 to cope. 



Various authors have described stupidity as a character- 

 istic of whole species, genera, orders, or classes in other 

 words, according to them stupidity is sometimes a specific 

 or generic character. But it is more than doubtful whether 

 in any of the alleged instances the allegation is true, whether 

 it can be borne out by facts. All fish, for instance, have 

 been described as stupid ; and there are apparent grounds 

 for such an assertion or generalisation in certain cases. 

 Thus we are told that the fish of the Gulf Stream such as 

 rays, bonitos, albicore, flying-fish, parrot-fish, king-fish, 

 Jew-fish, and sun-fish may be caught from shipboard by 

 'anything' in the form of a bait, including a shred of scarlet 

 cloth or' a scrap of shining metal. For many kinds of large 

 fish a tea-spoon makes a very good ' bait ' for instance, for 

 albicore, in the Pacific, by trolling astern. Sailors often fish 

 with a piece of wood, having tied round it a white rag, 

 'hanging loose to represent the wings' of a flying-fish 

 ( c Chambers's Journal '). Here we have simply a ready lia- 

 bility to being deceived, to confound the imitation and the 

 real, to jump at conclusions without due observation or re- 

 flection, all arising, again, from inexperience of man's lures. 



But, on the other hand, we know that many fishes, under 

 other circumstances, show great intelligence and affection ; 



