250 THE INTELLIGENCE OF MAMMALS 



in my mind a general conviction that animals are capable 

 of drawing simple conclusions, but there are alternate pos- 

 sibilities of interpretation in many cases, and incompleteness 

 of data in so many others that I am unable to present any 

 number of instances in which inference of a very articulate 

 kind is indubitably shown. The subject is one on which 

 we need more experiments performed by investigators 

 acquainted with the animaPs previous history and keenly 

 alive to the various possible psychological interpretations 

 which may be put upon an animal's behavior. The diffi- 

 culties and pitfalls of the subject are far beyond the realiza- 

 tion of most of the contributors to our data on comparative 

 psychology. There is a large amount of material too care- 

 fully recorded to be cavalierly rejected as worthless, but too 

 incomplete to be accepted as entirely conclusive on the sub- 

 ject of animal inference; it will doubtless prove of great 

 value in suggesting lines for future work. 



A case in point is the following account of two dogs, 

 contributed by Mr. Stone to Romanes' "Animal Intelli- 

 gence/' " One of them, the larger, had a bone, and when he 

 had left it the smaller dog went to take it, the larger one 

 growled, and the other retired to a corner. Shortly after- 

 ward the larger dog went out, but the other did not appear 

 to notice this, and at any rate did not move. A few minutes 

 later the large dog was heard to bark out of doors; the little 

 dog then, without a moment's hesitation, went straight to 

 the bone and took it. It thus appears evident that she 

 reasoned 'That dog is barking out of doors, therefore he 

 is not in this room, therefore it is safe for me to take the 

 bone.' The action was so rapid as to be clearly a conse- 

 quence of the other dog's barking." 



The behavior described will not appear to anyone familiar 

 with dogs as anything improbable. The doubtful feature 



