INTELLIGENCE IN ANIMALS. 161 



" Here/' proceeds Darwin, " we have reasoning, 

 though not quite perfect, for the retriever might 

 have brought the wounded bird first, and then 

 returned for the dead one, as in the case of the two 

 wild ducks/' If the dog had followed the wiser 

 course, it would not have been quite so clear as in 

 the actual case that he had reasoned, though the 

 pause for consideration after an attempt to take both 

 together, would have gone far to suggest that ex- 

 planation. But the action of the dog in killing the 

 bird seems quite decisive, because such an act was 

 entirely opposed to the instincts of the breed, and to 

 the training which retrievers receive. 



To these cases Darwin adds the statement that 

 "the mulateers in South America say, ' I will not 

 give you the mule whose step is the easiest/ but la 

 mas rational the one that reasons best " ; on which 

 Humboldt has remarked, " this popular expression, 

 dictated by long experience, combats the system of 

 animated machines better, perhaps, than all the argu- 

 ments of speculative philosophy." Here, although 

 Darwin only quotes Humboldt, he manifestly expresses 

 his own view, and we find him opposed in a very 

 definite manner to the theory of Kepler, afterwards 

 supported by Descartes, and recently advocated by 

 Huxley and others, that animals are automata, not 

 possessing consciousness (or at any rate that this 

 theory is admissible) . 



The next case to be considered is one which was 

 described a year or two since in Nature. It was not 



M 



