No. 391.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 613 
type of the color-changing function, a perception-reaction of teleo- 
logical fitness under the given environmental conditions. He con- 
ceives it throughout as a true simulation, a “ device,” “ pretense,” or 
feigning; but this is by no means an indisputable conclusion. It 
overlooks the theory that the simulation of death is a true syncope, 
the temporary paralysis of the nervous system being induced by 
sudden shock —a theory which views the process as an advanta- 
geous adaptation to the environment, but not a designed adjustment 
to it. This conception is apparently overlooked in the book, yet in 
view of the conflict of evidence, no investigator is justified in putting 
it aside unconsidered. Preyer regards the whole phenomenon of 
letisimulation in insects as due to cataplexy, and Romanes, while 
commenting favorably upon this opinion, cites other authorities who 
interpret after the same fashion the feigning of death in the higher 
vertebrates as well. Borik Machovo 
The Methods of Comparative Psychology.'— In his Dawn of 
Reason, Dr. Weirs sympathetic interpretation carries him, I am 
inclined to think, too far in his'ascription to lower orders of life of 
processes and methods analogous to those of human mental activity. 
It is possible to read too little of psychical accompaniment into the 
animal’s actions, as in the extreme type of Cartesian automatism, 
and it is possible also to read too much. To illustrate with an inci- 
dent at hand: A Boston lady had a pet house-dog whose favorite 
snoozing-place was a certain cushioned chair. If his mistress needed 
the chair and found him occupying it, instead of roughly ejecting 
him, her method was to adopt the ruse of calling him to the window 
by pointing to something in the street and telling him to watch, 
whereupon she would take possession of the coveted seat. One 
day, while seated in the chair herself, the dog came into the room, 
and after nosing about for a moment, ran to the window, gazed up 
and down the street and began barking excitedly. His mistress 
soon arose and came over to seek the cause of the dog’s alarm. 
Unable to discover anything, she turned away toward her easy-chair 
again, but only to behold the little animal snugly curled upon it in 
oblivion and content. Reasoning from analogy between the actions 
of the dog and those of his mistress, one would say that he had delib- 
erately made use of artifice to obtain possession of the seat. The 
only facts contributed by the incident itself, however, are the barking 
1 Mills, Wesley. The Nature of Animal Intelligence and the Methods of 
Investigating It, Psychological Review, vol. vi, No. 3, May, 1899. 
