THE DESCENT OB ORIGIN OF MAN 109 



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 wit- 

 nessed the same behavior in other animals. 



I have seen, as I dare say 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 cur- 

 rent reflected on all sides may drive the object within his 

 reach. Again, a well-known ethnologist, Mr. Westropp, 

 informs me that he observed in Vienna a bear deliberately 

 making with his paw a current in some water, which was 

 close to the bars of his cage, so as to draw a piece of float- 

 ing 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 ac- 

 tions, 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 associated 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 disappointed; and in both it seems 

 to be equally an act of reason, whether or not any general 

 proposition on the subject is consciously placed before the 

 mind." The same would apply to the elephant and the bear 

 making currents in the air or water. The savage would cer- 

 tainly neither know nor care by what law the desired move- 

 ments were effected; yet his act would be guided by a rude 



^* Prof. Huxley has analyzed -with admirable clearness the mental steps by 

 which a man, as well as a dog, arrives at a conclusion in a case analogous 

 to that given in my text. See his article, "Mr. Darwin's Critics," in the 

 "Contemporary Review," Nov. 1871, p. 462, and in his "Critiques and Es- 

 says," 1813, p. 279. 



