160 OEGANIC EVOLUTION — MENTAL 



lamb or a fawn, which is able to recognize and follow its 

 dam immediately after birth, displays much more know- 

 ledge of the world than does a young dog, and vastly 

 more than a new-born infant, which cannot even seek 

 the breast ; but the mental traits acquired subsequently 

 by the lamb are small as compared to those acquired by 

 the pup, and infinitely little as compared to those 

 acquired by the infant. It is to be noted, however, that 

 though the most intelligent animals are generally the 

 most helpless at birth, yet their helplessness is not always 

 due entirely to Cessation of Selection, whereby, owing to 

 the substitution of reason for instinct as a chief factor 

 in survival, the instincts are lapsed ; but that reversed 

 selection must often have played some part in the 

 elimination of instinct, for often the helplessness at birth 

 of many of the more intelligent animals is an advantage 

 to them, either owing to the situatioiis in which they are 

 born, or to the manner in which their parents procure 

 food. For instance, the kind of intelligence displayed 

 by a young chick or lamb would be distinctly unfavour- 

 able to the survival of young jackdaws, parrots, or 

 puppies. Nevertheless the general truth, that as reason 

 increases instinct decreases, manifestly holds. 



It follows as a corollary from the above, and as a 

 proof of it, that animals in which reason predominates, 

 which have little knowledge of the world at birth, but 

 acquire much knowledge subsequently, must, when 

 removed from the ancestral environment, display in a 



flies and other small insects without actually pecking at them. 

 In doing this, its head could be seen to shake like a hand that is 

 attempted to be held steady by a visible effort. This I observed 

 and recorded when I did not understand its meaning. For it was 

 not untU after, that I found it to be the invariable habit of the 

 turkey, when it sees a fly settled on any object, to steal on the 

 unwary insect with slow and measured step untU sufficiently near, 

 when it advances its head very slowly and steadily^till within an 

 inch or so of its prey, which is then seized by a sudden dart.' " 

 —Romanes' Mental Mvolution in Animals, pp. 161-4. 



