FACULTIES OF THE MIND. 219 
with which they have been recalled. But there are some 
ideas which can be recalled with difficulty, whatever 
exertions we may have made originally to render them per- 
manent. Thus, the perceptions of sight and touch are 
more readily recollected than those of sound, taste or smell. 
In the latter, we seldom can recall a distinct idea; but, 
in the attempt, rest frequently satisfied with the recollection 
of the symbols by which it is designated. 
In comparing objects with one another, we employ the 
powers of attention and memory in conjunction. Having, 
by means of attention, fixed the mind on one object, we 
can then turn it to another: the memory preserves the im- 
pressions which the former produced, so as to compare 
these with the qualities of the latter. 
This faculty of memory is essentially requisite to our 
attainment of knowledge. Without it our intellectual im- 
provement would be confined within very narrow limits. 
It exhibits itself in various degrees of excellence in different 
individuals, partly the result of constitutional arrangements, 
and partly of habit. In all cases its various properties are 
improved by exercise. 
The existence of the faculty of memory in the lower ani- 
mals, can scarcely be doubted, as instances daily occur of 
its display in our domestic quadrupeds, as the elephant, 
horse, and dog *. It is likewise exhibited by birds. We 
* In illustration of the extent of the memory of the elephant, Mr Corse, 
in his valuable observations on the natural history of that animal, states the 
following circumstances, to which he was an eye-witness :-—‘“ In June 1787, 
Fattra Munqul, a male elephant, taken the year before, was travelling, in 
company with other elephants, towards Chittigong, laden with a tent and 
some baggage for our accommodation on the journey. Having come upon a 
tiger’s track, which clephants discover readily by the smell, he took fright, 
and ran off to the woods, in spite of the efforts of his driver. On entering 
the wood, the driver saved himself, by springing from the elephant, and 
