AlAY 13, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



749 



in question, but still tliej^ do not differ 

 sufficiently to free them from the force of 

 the objections which may be urged against 

 all such ways of determining the nature of 

 animal intelligence. Nevertheless, Mr. 

 Hobhouse, using similar methods, came to 

 very different conclusions from Dr. Thorn- 

 dike, so that it would appear that some- 

 thing more than 'a pair of eyes' is neces- 

 sary for the solution of the problems of 

 animal psychology. Mr. Hobhouse, from 

 all his experiments and a critical ex- 

 amination of those of others, together 

 with the weighing of the evidence af- 

 forded by the most extended and accurate 

 series of consecutive observations on mam- 

 mals available, came to the conclusion that 

 'on their own lines and in their own way, 

 some of the more understood mammals 

 have powers equivalent to those of the 

 ape.' He also in criticism of the experi- 

 mental method says, 'so a dog may show 

 not merely highly developed hunting in- 

 stincts, but real cleverness in the adapta- 

 tion of past experience when it is a ques- 

 tion of catching a hare, but he may be also 

 an intolerable dullard about opening a 

 box.' Herein lies a great truth which the 

 experimenters have failed in general to 

 note. No animal and no man is equal to 

 his fellows in all respects, and we know 

 that some very able men, some men of un- 

 doubted genius, are exceedingly slow in 

 certain directions. 



To test an animal's intelligence by 

 mechanisms seems to be aboi^t on a par 

 with gauging the nature of a man's intel- 

 lect by certain 'puzzles' in which, as is 

 well known, many able men are, indeed, 

 'intolerable dullards.' A set of experi- 

 ments better adapted for the examination 

 of the intelligence of the group in question, 

 white rats, was that of Mr. Small. He 

 used a maze, Avhich was so arranged that 

 when the animal secured the food that was 

 put in the central portion, he was free 



from the maze and could return to his cage. 

 The shortest path to the food was 105 feet, 

 and there were 27 corners to be turned. 

 It is a very noteworthy fact that when 

 monkeys were tried in a similar maze they 

 did no better than the rats, in fact scarcely 

 as well. But how fallacious it would be 

 to conclude that the rat's intelligence is 

 equal to that of the monkey. However, Mr. 

 Small seems to have been a somewhat 

 cautious investigator, and his work, in- 

 cluding observations systematically carried 

 out on the psychic development of young 

 white rats— Avhich he has been good enough 

 to say was suggested by my own series on 

 our domestic mammals and birds — his ex- 

 periments with the white rat and his dis- 

 cerning criticism of the work of others, 

 had not a little advanced the subject of ani- 

 mal psychology. 



In quite another class and altogether less 

 open to criticism are certain experiments 

 made by Mr. Hobhouse. He ascertained 

 how a dog, left upstairs in a building, would 

 get to his master who called him from out- 

 side. While some of the laboratories have 

 almost wholly ignored the individuality of 

 animals, this criticism does not apply to 

 Mr. Hobhouse. As this writer seems to 

 me to have taken, on the whole, about the 

 broadest, safest and most helpful views of 

 animal intelligence, I feel justified, even in 

 so general a treatment of the subject as the 

 occasion permits, in calling further atten- 

 tion to them. Passing by his discussion of 

 instinct for the present, after pointing out 

 that Dr. Thorndike's experiments with 

 cats, dogs and chickens were 'quite outside 

 the range of the animal's ordinary ex- 

 perience,' he says, 'What Mr. Thorndike's 

 experiments prove so far is not that cats 

 and dogs are invariably educated by the 

 association process, that is by habituation 

 alone, but on the contrary that at least some 

 cats and dogs conform in at least one point 

 to the method of acquisition by concrete 



