ODDITIES OF ANIMAL LIFE. 525, 



in his experiments on ants, Sir John Lubbock has gone on the sounder principle 

 of setting' the ants problems to solve for themselves — a principle which has re- 

 sulted in showing that different races of ants have very different resources, and 

 that different individuals, even in the same race, show a very different amount of 

 resource in dealing with the same difficulty. This is confirmed by what we 

 know of our more intimate friends among the domestic animals; and surely we 

 should do more to develop their capacity by stimulating them to meet difficulties 

 by their own resources than we can effect by taking their training so com- 

 pletely under our own care. Is it not possible that, as things go, the com- 

 panionship of man is rather an incubus on the natural genius of the inferior 

 animals than a a help to its development? It is clear that the ants, at least, 

 are more sagacious in proportion as they live more apart from man, and are 

 thrown upon their own resources. The harvesting-ants of Texas and the leaf- 

 cutting and military ants of Nicaragua are far higher in civilization than the 

 ants of the more densely peopled countries of Europe. In proportion as they 

 have a freer scope for their efforts, their social communities appear to be founded 

 on a more advanced intelligence and organization. Is it not possible that we 

 stunt the intelligence of our humbler fellow-creatures by doing so much for them, 

 and permitting them to do so little for themselves? 



Certainly there is far too little disposition to allow of eccentricity in the 

 lower animals and for what comes of eccentricity. Half-domesticated birds, 

 however, will occasionally show very remarkable eccentricities, and even appear 

 to be making experiments — though experiments which we should, of course, re- 

 gard as of a very unscientific kind — in the modification of their own instincts. 

 The present writer knows a pigeon of exceedingly eccentric disposition, not unlike 

 "the single gentleman" in Dickens' " Curiosity Shop" in his habits. He keeps 

 seven pigeon boxes all to himself, and persecutes relentlessly any pigeons which 

 propose to share their dwellings with him. He is as averse to the society even of 

 the gentler sex as was St. Anthony himself in Egyptian deserts. Not a pigeon 

 will he admit within the circle of his sway. And yet, in spite of this resolute 

 and inveterate bachelorhood, this eccentric pigeon is always endeavoring to 

 build nests, and looking out for objects of an egg-like form, which he thinks it 

 possible to hatch. He will accumulate twigs and straws now here, now there, at 

 very great pains and labor. He will coo sometimes to inanimate objects, some- 

 times to captive birds of another breed, sometimes to a kitten or a dog, or even a 

 flower-pot, with the quaintest and politest antics. He will sit patiently on China- 

 saucers on the mantel-piece of one room, while he accumulates the materials for 

 a nest on the top of a closet in another room. He does not even drive away the 

 possible mother of a family with more zeal than he shows in seeking to be a good 

 father to some imaginary chick which he seems to expect to elicit fromaring-stand 

 or a letter-weight. So for as the writer can judge, he is a pigeon of strong Mal- 

 thusian views, who hopes to inaugurate a new regime which may have the same 

 relation to the ordinary habits of pigeons which the Positivist worship bears to 



VIII-34 



