Dec. 9, 1869] 
NATURE 
169 
collegiate undergraduates of Oxford ; to all undergraduates 
of Oxford ; and any students who are not members of 
either University. The candidates may select their own 
subjects for examination. Besides these there are three 
other exhibitions perfectly open, which are distributed 
annually among the most deserving students of the College. 
Clare College—One of the value of 50/. per annum. 
The examination (in chemistry, chemical physics, com- 
parative anatomy, physiology, and geology) will be on 
March 3oth, and will be open to students intending to 
begin residence in October. The candidates must show 
such acquaintance with classics and mathematics as will 
qualify them to pass the previous examination. 
St. Peter’s College.—One of the value of 60/. per annum. 
The examination (in chemistry, botany, comparative 
anatomy and physiology) will be in June, and will be open 
to all students who are not members of the University, or 
who have not commenced residence in the University. 
~ Downing College.—One or more, according to the merits 
of the candidates, of the value of 4o/. per annum. The 
examination (in chemistry, comparative anatomy, and 
physiology) will be in March, and will be open to all 
students not members of the University, as well as to all 
undergraduates in their first term. 
Sidney College —Two of the value of 4o/. per annum. 
The examination (in heat, electricity, chemistry, geology, 
physiology, botany) will be in October, and will be open 
to all students who may enter on the college boards before 
October Ist. 
Although several subjects for examination are in each 
instance given, this is rather to afford the option of one or 
more to the candidates than to induce them to present a 
superficial knowledge of several. Indeed, it is expressly 
stated by some of the colleges that good clear knowledge 
of one or two subjects will be more esteemed than a 
general knowledge of several. 
Candidates, especially those who are not members of 
the University, will in most instances be required to show 
a fair knowledge of classics and mathematics ; such, for 
example, as would enable them to pass their previous 
examination. 
There is no restriction on the ground of religious 
denomination in the case of these or any of the scholar- 
ships or exhibitions in the university or the college. 
Further necessary information may be obtained from 
the tutors of the respective colleges. 
It may be added that Trinity College will give a fellow- 
ship for natural science once, at least, in three years, and 
that most of the colleges are understood to be willing to 
award fellowships for merit in natural science equivalent 
to that for which they are in the habit of giving them for 
classics and mathematics. 
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 
[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 
by his Correspondents.) 
Mental Progress of Animals 
I HAVE failed to meet with a satisfactory treatment of this 
subject either in works of mental philosophy or natural history. 
Sir John Lubbock, in ‘‘ Prehistoric Times,” refers to the like- 
lihood of the sagacity of man and the wariness of animals pro- 
ceeding part passu; but he does not develop the idea or aid it by 
illustration, and I find that the tradition still widely prevails that 
the instinct and intelligence of animals is a thing fixed and un- 
changeable; and that the mammals which roamed over the world 
during the earlier and middle tertiary epoch must be credited with 
the same amount of sagacity as their representatives of the present 
day. Such statements are assumptions opposed to the current of 
any facts we possess on the subject. Much of what has been termed 
cunning in animals will be found to have been very much 
sharpened and made evident in quadrupeds and birds, owing to 
the new necessities imposed upon them by man the tamer or 
man the destroyer, 
For it is under one of these two characters that man approaches 
animals, affecting them in the most complex and vivid manner. 
No bird or quadruped so high in the mental scale as the dog, 
horse, rat, rook, or sparrow, has been found in the lonely 
oceanic isles or in any region free, or all but free, from human 
influence; not because in these quarters such animals could not 
exist, but rather it would seem because the aboriginal fauna had 
no opportunity for the improvement of its wits by coming in 
contact with an enemy or friend so complex, dreadful, and 
ingenious as a human being. 
One of the first impulses communicated to the wits of the 
wild animals is that derived from the sense of new wants. Now, 
this is what man supplies by his cultivated fruits and cereals. A 
feast is spread before quadrupeds and birds more generous than 
that of nature. But this banquet is guarded, and often becomes 
a baited trap in which the simple thief is caught; but a very 
slight increment of sagacity is sometimes enough to turn the 
scale, and this quickness of wit, especially in the first ages of 
society, as among existing savages, would be slowly met by 
improvement of trap. Necessity—on either side the mother of 
invention—would at last permit only wary vigilant enemies, 
since these alone could succeed, to hang round the skirts of 
kraals and wigwams, approach in twilight the crops near stockaded 
villages, prowl about places of interment, lodge in sewers, enter 
cellars; and, keenly alive to every sign of danger, multiply in 
spite of poison, trap, and gun, and in defiance of trained animals 
of their own and allied species, and that division of labour 
which gives us special hunters. 
The fear of man is a slowly acquired instinct. Mr. Darwin, 
in his account of his travels, gives some interesting instances of 
the fearlessness of birds little exposed to man in South America. 
The crew of Byron’s vessel were astonished at the manner in 
which the wolf-like dog of the Falkland Islands approached 
them merely out of curiosity. Compare these traits with the 
admirably organised expeditions for plunder of baboons, elephants, 
&c., and the rude customs acted upon for self-preservation of the 
half-wild dogs of the Peninsula and the East, wherein the care 
of the weak and young, the usefulness of sentries, the value of 
signals, the difference between sham and real danger, and the 
advantage of confusing traces of retreat, seem all to be known, 
and it will be pretty evident that man the thinker has to a con- 
siderable extent reacted on animals wild and domestic. Even 
in my own quarter it is the steady belief of the shepherds that 
the common sheep-dog has progressed in intelligence and docility 
within the last fifty years by careful selection. ‘‘ Where the dog 
is not valued for intelligence, as in some Eastern countries, it is a 
much more stupid animal than with us.” 
Now were we in vision to behold that wonderful Miocene age, 
when the great mammals roamed over Europe unpeopled as yet 
by man, I am convinced that both they and the birds of the 
period would be less interesting and more monotonous in their 
habits than those which people Europe at the present day, and 
have for ages been engaged in a struggle for existence with a 
being so much superior to themselves; and that in prehuman 
times the horn, hoof, tooth, and coat of mail, to a far greater 
extent than now, ensured victories which other and more subtle 
agencies are now necessary to Secure on the part of those animals 
nearest to man in organisation and habits. 
Noy, 21 sjegsye 
The Suez Canal 
I NorTIceE in your number of 4th inst. an article relating to 
the Suez Canal (by Mr. Login, C.E., late of the Ganges Canal), 
and shall be glad if you will allow me to make a few observa- 
tions with reference to it. 
In making his suggestions, Mr. Login appears to have over- 
looked the fact that there is already a sweet-water canal connect- 
ing the Nile with the centre of the isthmus, and passing through 
the Wadi Toumilat, which it has watered and fertilised ; and, 
further, that it is proposed, when the actual work of excavation 
in the maritime canal is completed, to commence irrigating 
operations on a large scale by means of this canal. 
As to diverting the Nile, or one of its mouths, and thereby 
forming the great maritime canal, that is quite another affair. 
In the first place, if I remember rightly, the water in the present 
sweet-water canal, where it meets the great canal, is some 
twelve feet above the level of the latter—in other words, above 
the level of the sea. Does Mr. Login think, then, that to carry 
the water at this level for 50 or 60 miles across and above the 
shallow lakes of Menzaleh and Ballah and the plain of Suez 
