Il6 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



NOTES ON DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



Read before the Biological Section. 

 BY WM. YATES, HATCHLEY. 



Some years ago we remember being much interested in reading 

 an article in Dickens' All the Year Round, under the heading " What 

 Horses think of Men." To get at a true surmise of the condition of 

 animal intelligence the thesis seemed to us to start at the right 

 point, and to people whose business it is to have the care and train- 

 ing of farm animals there were useful suggestions to be gleaned from 

 its perusal. 



A majority of our farmers take much pride in dilating on the 

 grand qualities and accomplishments of the horse, and the charm 

 that the education of the horse is known to have for our tillers of the 

 soil seems to be that that animal is amenable to judicious treat- 

 ment, and that his disposition and idiosyncrasies are a reflex image 

 of those of the human being, to whose management and tutorship 

 his " breaking in " has been intrusted ; and also that the intelligence 

 of the animal is capable of being usefully modified and extended by 

 gradual and repeated incentives to the obedience of a superior will. 



We think that it can also be shown that the bovine race are 

 nearly as plastic and impressionable from exterior sources as are 

 their equine associates of the field or barnyard, and, in fact, the 

 assumptions apply with greater or less truth to nearly all the tribes 

 and classes of inferior animals. 



In the course, of a number of years of observation and familiar- 

 ity with the habits, instincts and behaviour of the bovine tribe as 

 exemplified in the pastures and in the cattle byres, we have become 

 convinced that these latter possess strong claims to more than a 

 glimmering of reason, and that in a rudimentary form the workings 

 of those higher brain faculties, that are sometimes exclusively 

 claimed for human beings, are not unfrequently demonstrated by 

 cows and oxen. We feel quite sure that they are not only capa- 

 ble of drawing the plough and the harrow, but that they can draw 

 inferences too, and are sometimes far from slow at taking a hint, and 



