THE EVOLUTION OF THE MIND. 269 
Many animals currently believed to be of high in- 
telligence are not so. The fur seal just mentioned, for 
example, finds its way back from the 
long swim of two or three thousand 
miles through a foggy and stormy sea, 
and is never too late or too early in arrival. The 
female fur seal goes two hundred miles to her feeding 
grounds in summer, leaving the pup on the shore. 
After a week or two she returns to find him within a 
few rods of the rocks where she had left him. Both 
mother and young know each other by call and by 
odour, and neither are ever mistaken, though ten thou- 
sand other pups and other mothers occupy the same 
rookery. But this is not intelligence. It is simply in- 
stinct, because it has no element of choice in it. What- 
ever its ancestors were forced to do the fur seal does to 
perfection. Its instincts are perfect as clockwork, and 
the necessities of migration must keep them so. But if 
brought into new conditions it is dazed and stupid. It 
can not choose when different lines of action are pre- 
sented. 
The Bering Sea Commission once made an experi- 
ment on the possibility of separating the young male 
fur seals, or “killables,” from the old ones in the same 
band. The method was to drive them through a wooden 
chute or runway with two valve-like doors at the end. 
These animals can be driven like sheep, but to sort them 
in the way proposed proved impossible. The most ex- 
perienced males would beat their noses against a closed 
door, if they had seen a seal before them pass through 
it. That this door had been shut and another opened 
beside it passed their comprehension. They could not 
choose the new direction. In like manner a male fur 
seal will watch the killing and skinning of his mates 
with perfect composure. He will sniff at their blood 
Intellect of the 
fur seal. 
