74 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



time afterwards associate a shock with a window-frame; but 

 very differently from the pike, he would probably reflect on the 

 nature of the impediment, and he cautious under analogous cir- 

 cumstances. Now with monkeys, as we shall presently see, a 

 painful or merely a disagreeable impression, from an action once 

 performed, Is sometimes suflScient to prevent the animal from 

 repeating it. If we attribute this difference between the monkey 

 and the pike solely to the association of ideas being so much 

 stronger and more persistent In the one than the other, though 

 the pike often received much the more severe injury, can we 

 maintain in the case of man that a similar difference implies the 

 possession of a fundamentally different mind? 



Houzeau relates-* that, whilst crossing a wide and arid plain 

 in Texas, his two dogs suffered greatly from thirst, and that 

 between thirty and forty times they rushed down the hollows 

 to search for water. These hollows were not valleys, and there 

 were no trees in them, or any other difference in the vegetation, 

 and as they were absolutely dry there could have been no 

 smell of damp earth. The dogs behaved as if they knew that 

 a dip in the ground offered them the best chance of finding 

 water, and Houzeau has often witnessed the same behavior in 

 other animals. 



I have seen, as I daresay have others, that when a small 

 object is thrown on the ground beyond the reach of one of the 

 elephants in the Zoological Gardens, he blows through his trunk 

 on the ground beyond the object, so that the current reflected 

 on all sides faay drive the object within his reach. Again a well- 

 known ethnologist, Mr. Westropp, informs me that he observed in 

 Vienna a bear deliberately makingwith his paw a current in some 

 water, which was close to the bars of his cage, so as to draw 

 a piece of floating bread within his reach. These actions of the 

 elephant and bear can hardly be attributed to instinct or inherited 

 habit, as they would be of little use to an animal in a state of 

 nature. Now, what is the difference between such actions, when 

 performed by an uncultivated man, and by one of the higher 

 animals? 



The savage and the dog have often found water at a low level, 

 and the coincidence under such circumstances has become asso- 

 ciated in their minds. A cultivated man would perhaps make 

 some general proposition on the subject; but from all that we 

 know of savages it is extremely doubtful whether they would do 

 so, and a dog certainly would not. But a savage, as well as a 

 dog, would search in the same way, though frequently dis- 

 appointed; and in both it seems to be equally an act of reason, 

 whether or not any general proposition on the subject is con- 



-' 'Faculles Mentales des Animaux,' 1872, torn. ii. p. 265. 



