pbesident's address. 183 



2. " Notes on the Hive Bee,'' by Robert Draper. 



3. "Notes on the Remains of Reptiles and Fishes frovi the 

 Shales of the Northumberland Coal Field,'' by T. Atthey. 



4. Remarks on the Nature and Modes of deposit of certain 

 Minerals which resemble in their external Characters organized 

 Bodies," by H. B. Brady, F.L.S. 



The reading of this paper was deferred. 



Having now referred, briefly, for the reason I stated at the 

 commencement, to our proceedings during the past year, I shall 

 pass on to a subject respecting which it has occurred to me to 

 offer some remarks on this occasion, and which I cannot think 

 will be deemed foreign to the objects of the Club. The subject 

 I refer to is the question relating to the existence and limits of 

 what is called Reason in the lower animals. It has been sug- 

 gested by what every one must have observed of late, viz., the 

 multitude of books in the publishers' lists, made up of wonderful 

 anecdotes of animals. These now form almost a branch of lite- 

 rature; and they bear to the sober facts of Natural History 

 about the same relation that sensation novels do to common 

 life. They betray very vague ideas, both in the writers and in 

 the popular mind, as to the nature of instinct, and the limits of 

 sagacity in brutes. The marvellous anecdotes I refer to are 

 generally related on the authority of truthful but inaccurate ob- 

 servers. They proceed, not from bad faith, but generally from 

 admiration for a favourite in persons of inaccurate thought, who 

 have no rational estimate of the faculties of animals to guide 

 their observations, or to check their acceptance of what is told 

 them. The stories hence arising become, of course, more mar- 

 vellous at each repetition, till they grow at length into the stock 

 anecdotes with which we are all familiar. 



Now, most of these stories have a basis of fact sufficiently 

 wonderful in itself, but they are often rendered incredible or 

 absurd by some impossible addition arising from ignorance in 

 the narrator. That such stories should be so generally received, 

 and admitted into educational books, is surely somewhat of a 

 reproach to natural science. If it be the object of such a society 



