INTELLIGENCE IN ANIMALS. 169 



gested by Mr. Henslow has been followed by an 

 animal. Mr. Henslow makes a good point in noting 

 how like the practical reasoning of animals is the 

 reasoning of young folk. " A boy the other day/' he 

 says, "found the straps of his skates frozen. The 

 fact only suggested cutting them. Not one of his 

 schoolfellows reflected upon the abstract fact that the 

 ice would melt if he sat upon his foot a few minutes. 

 Hence brutes and boys are exactly alike in that 

 nothing occurs to either beyond what the immediate 

 fact before them may suggest. The one kind I call 

 purely practical reasoning, which both have; the 

 other abstract, which brutes never acquire; but the 

 boy will as his intelligence develops." 



Certainly the next case cited in the correspondence 

 suggests practical rather than abstract reasoning. 

 " In Central Park, one very hot day, my attention/' 

 writes Mr. James J. Furniss, of New York, "was 

 drawn to the conduct of an elephant which had been 

 placed in an inclosure in the open air. On the ground 

 was a large heap of newly-mown grass, which the 

 sagacious animal was taking up by the trunkf ul, and 

 laying carefully upon his sun-heated back. He con- 

 tinued the operation until his back was completely 

 thatched, when he remained quiet, apparently enjoying 

 the result of his ingenuity. It seems to me that 

 instinct should have prompted the elephant to eat the 

 grass, and that it was reason which caused him to use 

 it for the purpose of diminishing the effect of the 

 sun's says." Undoubtedly, had hunger been the 



