The Borders of Reason and Instinct 345 
by Europeans. Their acts need no fanciful interpretation. Thus, a very clever setter 
bitch, when about to be taken out for a walk, was given a piece of biscuit. She did 
not want it, but at the same time did not wish to be rude. She instantly put it down 
on the mat by her master’s foot, pushed it up to his boot with her nose, and with her 
paw pulled the foot towards tt. This meant, “I don’t want the biscuit now, thanks; 
but put something over it, and keep it for me till I come back.” The pull at the foot 
was just as a dumb person might take another’s hand and lay it over something, as 
an inducement to take care of the object. 
On the other hand, one of the stupidest and most helpless failures in dog-life ever 
seen, a dog for whom everyone was sorry, because he was so entirely unable to take 
care of himself, was absolutely first-class when he dropped his imperfect reason and 
relied entirely on instinct for pomting and finding game. 
When in the shooting-field his “ nose’? was extraordinary, and he would wind 
partridges at a great distance and point them as steadily as could be wanted, also 
quartering the ground (an inherited gift more or less) in a very finished way, though 
he had never been taught to do so. Yet he always spoiled the effect by some outrage 
against the laws of the field, which he could never be taught to understand or 
respect. 
Animal intelligence, though not necessarily higher in degree when they are acting 
as our servants and not for their own ends, is then very much more easily appreciated 
and understood by us. Consequently its exhibition in such employment is worth careful 
consideration. Taking game by setting or pointing, or by the much less well-known work 
of the decoy dog, has been one of the forms in which canine intellect has been longest 
employed. There is an old picture, painted in the early sixteenth century, of the 
Garden of Eden, in which a pointer is “standing” a brace of partridges! The 
“point” is a curious example of an action in which instinct and reason meet. The 
stopping of the dog, however it began, has by training and heredity become instinctive. 
The dog, even when quite a puppy, stops when it smells the game, and remains almost 
paralysed, its impulse to rush in and seize it being checked by a strong instinct to 
stand still, during which it derives an actual physical enjoyment from the scent of the 
game—at least, a modern scientific authority tells us so. Yet the dog, after he has 
accompanied his master and had game shot over him, is quite aware that he is a 
half-controlled “medium,” and, while still under the dominating ‘“ pointing” instinct, 
will look round imploringly to his master to urge him to hurry up if the scent tells 
him that the birds are moving. 
A border-lie action of a different kind is the squatting instinct of young birds. It 
is a perfectly reasonable precaution. Keeping still and lying low are not characteristics 
peculiar only to Brer Rabbit; but it is most remarkable to see the way in which tiny 
peewits, or little teal, hardly bigger than a fluffy humble-bee, lie down, put their little 
chins flat on the ground, and remain motionless for minutes to avoid being seen. 
Examples of what may be called assisted instinct, or instinctive actions in which 
reason comes in to aid in doing what instinct partly accomplishes, are not numerous. 
These border-line sets of action are also most suggestive of the nature of what we call 
instinct. It seems as if some animals had two selves, the instinctive or automatic 
self, and the reasoning, free-will acting self, and that in the latter capacity they 
were able to survey their instinctive self, and calculating from what instinct would do, 
go a step further and improve on the act by reason. ‘The example of the pointer dog, 
who points almost automatically and by instinct, but “breaks” the point, or hints 
the time at which his master ought to take advantage of his instinctive act, by the 
aid of canine reason, is perhaps the best example. But if we take the inherited 
and instinctive act of squatting to avoid being seen, which very many animals do, 
