THE INSTINCT 
BORDERS AND 
OF REASON. 
By C. J. CORNISH, M.A., F.Z.S. 
Cee the want of variety in the acts which make up the daily life of most 
animals, the development of the reasoning faculty in most of them is high, and 
must be deemed ample considering the disadvantages under which they are placed by 
the lack of speech. heir capacity for developing and improving their reasoning 
powers is also very considerable. The difference between a horse and a pony has 
often been said to consist not so much in size of body, but of brain. It is generally 
said that most ponies are clever, and most horses the reverse, though the inference 
is scarcely 1air to the larger animal. When allowed to use their brains horses are 
clever enough; but they are generally shut up in stables, artificially fed, warmed, and 
sometimes clothed, and the object of their training is to make them as much like 
machines as possible. If a horse even dares to look at an object which he does not 
understand as he passes, he gets his head checked in the opposite direction, and a 
rating or cut of the whip. The consequence is that his whole reasoning faculty 
is concentrated to one end—a blind obedience. Many jokes were made about 
the omnibus horses sent out to the war for the use of the artillery. It was 
said that they needed a bell or a whistle to start them. It was true im a 
sense; but they were so obedient that they would take the guns forward or fetch 
them away when shells were bursting all round them, and after rifle bullets actually 
wounded them. Our clever ponies are the result of centuries of hard fare and poor 
living. They have for generations shifted for themselves, and the most sensible 
naturally survived. When used either for riding, or in harness, they are generally much 
more in the company of men, or running loose in the fields and being ridden by 
all and sundry; and the result is a much more highly-developed power of reasoning 
in the Basuto or Boer pony than in the English carriage horse. 
But the degrees of cleverness in animals of the same species is remarkable. The 
brightness and quickness of some dogs are as different from the stupidity of others 
as is the effortless attainment of accomplishments in the best specimens of boys or 
eirls compared with the lumpish stupidity of others. The writer has, on a very few , 
occasions, come across these brilliantly clever dogs, quite as often of the female as of 
the male sex. They not only learn anything that it may be wished to teach them; 
they improvise to meet difficulties, and, what is more, they make mistakes of the kind 
which some naturally quick-minded aboriginal might make who was being domesticated 
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