THE DESCENT OR ORIGIN OF MAN 111 



stream; his retriever tried to bring over both at once, but 

 could not succeed; she then, though never before known 

 to ruffle a feather, deliberately killed one, brought over the 

 other, and returned for the dead bird. Col, Hutchinson 

 relates that two partridges were shot at once, one being 

 killed, the other wounded; the latter ran away, and was 

 caught by the retriever, who on her return came across the 

 dead bird; "she stopped, evidently greatly puzzled, and 

 after one or two trials, finding she could not take it up 

 without permitting the escape of the winged bird, she con- 

 sidered a moment, then deliberately murdered it by giving 

 it a severe crunch, and afterward brought away both to- 

 gether. This was the only known instance of her ever 

 having wilfully injured any game." Here we have reason, 

 though not quite perfect, for the retriever might have 

 brought the wounded bird first and then returned for the 

 dead one, as in the case of the two wild ducks. I give 

 the above cases, as resting on the evidence of two independ- 

 ent witnesses, and because in both instances the retrievers, 

 after deliberation, broke through a habit which is inherited 

 by them (that of not killing the game retrieved), and be- 

 cause they show how strong their reasoning faculty must 

 have been to overcome a fixed habit. 



I will conclude by quoting a remark by the illustrious 

 Humboldt.'* "The muleteers in South America say, 'I will 

 not give you the mule whose step is easiest, but la mas 

 racional — the one that reasons best' "; and, as he adds, 

 "this popular expression, dictated by long experience, com- 

 bats the system of animated machines better perhaps than 

 all the arguments of speculative philosophy." Nevertheless 

 some writers even yet deny that the higher animals possess 

 a trace of reason; and they endeavor to explain away, by 

 what appears to be mere verbiage,^* all such facts as those 

 above given. 



28 "Personal Narrative," Bng. translat., vol. iii. p. 106. 

 ** I am glad to find that so acute a reasouer as Mr. Leslie Stephen ("Dar- 

 winism and Divinity, Essays on Free-thinking," 1873, p. 80), in speaking of 



