WAYS OF NATURE 
time by arousing the fears of any wild bird: how all 
the other birds catch the alarm! Charles St. John 
says that in Scotland the stag you are stalking is 
sure to be put to flight if it hears the alarm-cry of 
the cock-grouse. You see it is more important that 
the wild creatures should understand the danger- 
signals of one another than that they should under- 
stand the rest of their language. 
To what extent animals reason, or show any glim- 
mering of what we call reason, is a much-debated 
question among animal psychologists, and I shall 
have more to say upon the subject later on. Dogs 
undoubtedly show gleams of reason, and other ani- 
mals in domestication, such as the elephant and the 
monkey. One does not often feel like questioning 
Darwin’s conclusions, yet the incident of the caged 
bear which he quotes, that pawed the water in front 
of its cage to create a current that should float within 
its reach a piece of bread that had been placed there, 
does not, in my judgment, show any reasoning about 
the laws of hydrostatics. The bear would doubtless 
have pawed a cloth in the same way, vaguely seek- 
ing to draw the bread within reach. But when an 
elephant blows through his trunk upon the ground 
beyond an object which he wants, but which is be- 
yond his reach, so that the rebounding air will drive 
it toward him, he shows something very much like 
reason. 
Instinct is a kind of natural reason, — reason 
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