450 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IX. No. 221. 



The Dawn of Reason, or Mental Traits in the 



Lower Animals. By James Weir, M. D. 



New York, The Macmillan Co. Pp. xiii+ 



234. Price, $1.25. 



Dr. Weir has evidently been a close observer 

 of animal life for many years, and his zeal has 

 given him wider opportunities for useful obser- 

 vation than most amateurs and many profes- 

 sional naturalists have had. His book contains 

 the more important of his own original observa- 

 tions of the intelligent activities of animals, 

 some interesting verifications of the results 

 gained by other observers, and his opinions 

 about the nature of animal consciousness. 

 Everything is purposely put in as simple lan- 

 guage as possible, and this perhaps is a suffi- 

 cient reason for the utter neglect of many ob- 

 servations, experiments and opinions which 

 oppose his views. Lloyd Morgan, for instance, 

 is nowhere mentioned, not even in the bibliog- 

 raphy. 



The popular nature of Dr. Weir's exposition 

 prevents any discussion here of his observations 

 on the morphology of the sense-organs of 

 various animals, e. g., jelly-fish, grasshoppers, 

 beetles. He finds the marginal bodies of jelly- 

 fish to be visual, not auditory organs, locates the 

 auditory organs of grasshoppers in the anterior 

 pair of legs, finds those of the Diptera to be the 

 ' balanciers ' of Bolles Lee, and those of the 

 Cerambyx beetle to be in the maxillary palpi. 

 It would certainly seem worth while for Dr. 

 Weir to present his data in complete form soon, 

 so that those competent may judge of the 

 soundness of his conclusions. He gives no 

 drawings. 



One cannot help lamenting the mental atti- 

 tude which served as the inspiration to Dr. 

 Weir's observations of the intelligent activities 

 of animals. He craves a high development of 

 mentality for the animals and has his eyes open 

 only to possible evidence of it. He likes to 

 find keen senses better than dull ones, reason- 

 ings than instincts, knowledge than ignorance. 

 He psychologizes about animals as a lover 

 might psychologize about his beloved. The 

 disadvantages are obvious. On the other hand, 

 there are some advantages, at least in the en- 

 thusiasm and patient labor which perhaps are 

 due to the eulogizing temper. Anyone inter- 



ested in the progress of comparative psychology 

 must wish well to a man who, without the in- 

 centives of the professed naturalist, makes it a 

 labor of love to watch animal life. I, for one, 

 shall welcome such observations, even though 

 they are more one-sided than Dr. Weir's. His 

 favoritism toward animals, though it has de- 

 prived us of any records of unintelligent con- 

 duct and perhaps prevented the repetition of 

 some tests and even distorted facts, has still 

 failed to injure a very considerable number of 

 suggestive and important observations. It will 

 pay any student of animal psychology to read 

 the book for the sake of these. They furnish 

 interesting, and we hope reliable, data about the 

 adaptive reactions of micro-organisms, the for- 

 mation by insects of new associations in re- 

 sponse to new situations, the formation by 

 reptiles of habits due to the association of novel 

 sights and sounds with certain reactions, about 

 ' play ' among insects, strange ' friendships' be- 

 tween animals, letisimulation, the activities of 

 the harvesting ants, etc. A sample of Dr. 

 Weir's keenness is his theory that the con- 

 tinual barking of dogs at night is explainable 

 by the supposition that they bark at an echo. 

 This hypothesis he supports by some very 

 striking facts. 



Of Dr. Weir's opinions about the meaning of 

 his facts there is little to be said. His mind does 

 not move freely and su^rely among psycholog- 

 ical terms or theories or deductions. Reason 

 means for him the source of all performances 

 above the level of instinct, and his only basis of 

 discrimination is the difference between high 

 and low. His only theoretical problem is as to 

 whether or not the human mind has developed 

 from the brute mind. It will be a birthday for 

 animal psychology when naturalists realize 

 that this is among the least of its problems. 

 Edvs^ard Thorndike. 



Westebjt Reserve University. 



SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS AND ARTICLES. 

 The December number of the Bulletin of the 

 American Mathematical Society contains an ac- 

 count of the October meeting of the Society, 

 by the Secretary, Professor F. N. Oole ; ' Con- 

 cerning a Linear Homogeneus Group in C,„,, 

 Variables Isomorphic to the General Linear 



