72 THE DESCENT OF M-IN. 



Other hand, a monkey which carefully attended to him could 

 always he trained. 



It is almost superfluous to state that animals have excellent 

 Memories for persons and places. A baboon at the Cape of Good 

 Hope, as I have been informed by Sir Andrew Smith, recognized 

 him with joy after an absence of nine months. I had a dog who 

 was savage and averse to all strangers, and I purposely tried his 

 memory after an absence of five years and two days. I went 

 near the stable where he lived, and shouted to him in my old 

 manner; he showed no joy, but instantly followed me out walk- 

 ing, and obeyed me, exactly as if I had parted with him only 

 half an hour before. A train of old associations, dormant during 

 five years, had thus been instantaneously awakened in his mind. 

 Even ants, as P. Huber" has clearly shown, recognized their 

 fellow-ants belonging to the same community after a separation 

 of four months. Animals can certainly by some means judge of 

 the intervals of time between recurrent events. 



The Imagination is one of the highest prerogatives of man. 

 By this faculty he unites former images and ideas, independently 

 of the will, and thus creates brilliant and novel results. A poet, 

 as Jean Paul Richter remarks," "who must reflect whether he 

 "shall make a character say yes or no — to the devil with him; 

 "he is only a stupid corpse." Dreaming gives us the best notion 

 of this power; as Jean Paul again says, "The dream is an in- 

 "voluntary art of poetry." The value of the products of our 

 imagination depends of course on the number, accuracy, and 

 clearness of our impressions, on our judgment and taste in select- 

 ing or rejecting the involuntary combinations, and to a certain 

 extent on our power of voluntarily combining them. As dogs, 

 cats, horses, and probably all the higher animals, even birds'" 

 have vivid dreams, and this is shown by their movements and 

 the sounds uttered, we must admit that they possess some power 

 of imagination. There must be something special, which causes 

 dogs to howl in the night, and especially during moonlight, in 

 that remarkable and melancholy manner called baying. All dogs 

 do not do so; and, according to Houzeau,^^ they do not then 

 look at the moon, but at some fixed point near the horizon. 

 Houzeau thinks that their imaginations are disturbed by the 

 vague outlines of the surrounding objects, and conjure up before 



'* 'Les Moeurs des Fourmls,' 1810, p. 150. 



" Quoted in Dr. Maudsley's Physiology and Pathology of Mind,' 1868, 

 pp. 19, 220. 



2» Dr. Jerdon, 'Birds of India,' vol. i. 1862, p. xxi. Houzeau says that 

 his parokeets and canary-birds dreamt: 'Paoultes Mentales,' torn. il. 

 p. 136. 



21 'Facultes Mentales des Animaux,' 1872, torn. ii. p. 181. 



