NA TURE 



[Nov. 6, 1879 



Intellect in Brutes 



I AM in possession of an intelligent pointer Jog, not quite two 

 years old. The manner in which he makes his exit from the 

 garden brought forcibly to my recollection Prof. Mbbins's 

 experiment with a pike, as narrated by Mr. Romanes in his 

 article "Animal Intelligence" in the Nineteenth Century tor 

 October 1S78, p. 659. A pike took three months to learn that 

 he could not reach a minnow separated from him by a sheet of 

 plate glass, and after its removal he never afterwards attacked 

 the minnow. As Mr. Romanes says : " the firmly-established 

 association of ideas never seems to have become disestablished." 

 My pointer seems to arrive at an established association of ideas 

 as fixed as the pike, a fact extremely interesting, considering 

 that the dog is much higher in the scale of life than a fish. 



The dog, when young, could only escape out of the garden 

 through a small and difficult gap between the gate-post and the 

 fence — a rose one. Some months ago a spar was broken out of 

 the gate, and though the hole thus made was from the ground 

 tipwards, and quite large enough to allow of the passage of a 

 large dog through it, yet it never took advantage of it. About 

 a month ago a friend presented me with a young dog of the same 

 variety, and it at once discovered the hole in the gate and \\ ent 

 through it. But the older dog continues still to use the old yap 

 between the post and the fence, and singularly enough it will see 

 its companion pass through the hole in the gate, and it will even 

 put its head through the vacan space and then turn aside and 

 painfully crawl through the fence gap, which as a young dog it 

 had discovered and used. 



The discussion concerning the intelligence of the lower 

 animals carried on in Nature has interested some of us here. 

 The following, regarding the gnawing of lead by rats, may 

 perhaps interest your readers. Capt. Moir of the 99th Regiment, 

 at present stationed here, showed me three bullets, still in the 

 cartridge (for the Martini-Henry rifle), half eaten away by the 

 rats, at Fort Chelmsford, Zululand. The rodents had made their 

 way into the haversack in which the cartridges were, cut the 

 strings tying the packet of cartridges, tore the brown paper off 

 in which they were rolled, and then nibbled at the balls. These 

 cartridges are made up in thin brass — which in no case was 

 gnawed at. Nearly the longitudinal half of the exposed part of 

 one bullet was eaten away ; they had eaten into half the bullet, 

 crossways of another cartridge, and in the third case they had 

 nibbled off the point of a bullet. 



It cannot be supposed that they nibbled for nibbling's sake ; 

 doubtless the smell of the grease in the cartridges attracted their 

 attention to the haversacks, and the smell of the grease behind 

 the bullets led them to attack the bullets — the only vulnerable 

 point. James Turnbull 



Grey Town, Natal, September S 



P.S. — There is a rat in Natal which, so far as I can gather, 

 frequently carries its young ones before they are covered with 

 hair ; the little things cleave to the teats with mouth and feet. 

 Gilbert White mentions that he once met with such an instance 

 in England. I have not secured a specimen of this rat, though 

 I have seen it once, and once only. — J. T. 



Centipedes and Bees 



As a postscript to Dr. Hutchinson's letters, I offer the 

 following : — 



The centipede does not "bite" at all — it makes tiny incisions 

 with its numerous feet, which in themselves cause trifling incon- 

 venience ; but, when alarmed, it drops into each some kind of 

 venom that causes intense inflammation (the modus operandi I 

 now forget, but a medical friend explained it very clearly). I 

 once had a centipede's nest in or near my bath-room, no less 

 than eleven of different sizes having been killed there. Our first 

 knowledge of them was derived from an infant child of the 

 female servant, who, having been left on the floor there, was 

 found crying and writhing beyond all soothing. When brought 

 to me the child w as feverish and restless, the left band specially 

 hot; on removing the little jacket, the fore- arm was found greatly 

 swelled and inflamed, with two rows, less than half an inch 

 apart, of pricks showing white on the delicate brown flesh. 

 Ipecacuanha and eau de luce soon subdued the pain, but it w as 

 days before the child was well again. Several other persons 

 also suffered from them, but only in one case was the line of 

 pricks clearly traceable. Once, stooping to take up a water- pot, 

 I felt a Utile froisse/u/nt about the thumb ; looking down, I per- 

 ceived a centipede fully four inche- long, which deliberately 

 crawled across my hand near the knuckles, causing no pain, but 



a most unpleasant titillation, which continued for some time, 

 though I put the hand in cold water immediately. On another 

 occasion, seeing a centipede on the naked foot of one of the 

 women, I called out to her, " Roho mut" (do not stir), and she 

 similarly escaped all serious injury, while an application of warm 

 oil very quickly removed all irritation. Of course it is only 

 when craw-ling straightforward and undisturbed that the line of 

 pricks can possibly be detected. On disturbance the animal 

 shrinks up, curls round, and brings a number of them into one 

 spot ; at least such was the case the only time I ever sazo a centi- 

 pede do mischief ; and the same appeared probable on other 

 occa-ions when I saw merely the after-result. 



I remember once, in the jungles of Rohilkund, one of our line 

 of elephants brushed down a bee's nest from an old tree. Some 

 of the nearest men were immediately stung ; the servant behind 

 me instantly wrapped me in a shawl I had beside me, then 

 wrapped himself from head to foot in his large Kummerbund, as 

 did all the other men, and off we went at speed to a small river 

 not far off, where the elephants (who had not escaped) plunged 

 themselves to their very backs, as the only mode of getting rid of 

 their little assailants. 



I may add that a small black scorpion common in the Dehlie 

 division is very venomous. I have myself seen a case in which 

 its " strike" was nearly fatal to a shepherd of about fifty years 

 of age. MEMORIA 



Bone-Sucking — A Habit of Cattle 



The habit of bone-sucking in cattle (Nature, vol. xx. p. 457) 

 is not peculiar to Natal. The learned Archbishop of Dublin, 

 Dr. Whately, many years since made a most interesting communi- 

 cation to the then existing Dublin Natural History Society on 

 this subject, and stated his observation that animals addicted to 

 bone-sucking invariably fell into an unhealthy state unless the 

 bone was removed from the held. There is a scarcity of lime- 

 stone, as Mr. Donovan suggests, with us to account for this 

 "bad habit," for such the Archbishop considered it. 



Dublin W. Frazer 



In response to the letter of Mr. H. C. Donovan (Nature, 

 vol. xx. p. 457), in relation to the habit of cattle in the colony of 

 Natal chewing bones, I beg leave to state that many years ago, in 

 a monograph on "Geophagy," I had occasion to put on record 

 a similar habit among the cows in one of the Southern Atlantic 

 States of the United States (vide Southern Medical and Surgical 

 Journal, new series, vol. i. pp. 417-444, August, 1845). From 

 this paper I quote (p. 442-443) the following extract bearing 

 upon the question : — 



" In confirmation of the importance of inorganic principles in 

 the food, I will here adduce a remarkable fact which has 

 repeatedly fallen under my own observation : The cows which 

 live on the extensive savannas and pine-barrens lying on the 

 north side of the Altamaba River, in Mcintosh County, 

 Georgia, subsist upon very coarse species of grasses, which are 

 probably deficient in some of the phosphatic or calcareous 

 ingredients essential to healthy nutrition, for these animals are 

 constantly observed to chew bones. They frequently remain sta- 

 tionary for hours, with the head elevated to prevent the saliva 

 from escaping from the mouth ; they w ill, by constant trituration, 

 gradiully reduce the bony mass to a very small size, when it is 

 rejected as an unmanageable morsel. The cattle in this section 

 of the state are usually rather lean, and cows brought from the 

 fertile plantations in the neighbourhood, if allowed to subsist on 

 what they can procure in the savannas and pine-barrens in the 

 course of a year or two become equally thin, and ultimately fall 

 into the habit of eating bones. I have not been able to ascertain 

 whether these animals indulge in this habit to a greater extent 

 when they are in a state of pregnancy and when they are giving 

 milk, but it appears reasonable that the increased demand for 

 mineral matters under such conditions of the economy would call 

 for a proportionate supply. The intelligent instinct which 

 prompts these animals to seek for a diet so extraordinary must 

 originate in an inadequate supply, in their impoverished aliment, 

 of some of the inorganic principles (probably the phosphatic 

 salts) essential to a proper nourishment of the osseous structures." 



Berkeley, California, October 4 John LeConte 



Earthquake in China 

 The north of China has been very unfortunate of late. Famine 

 has raged in the provinces of Shantung, Shansi, Shensi, and 



