1881.] The Reasoning Faculty of Animals. 615 
adopting animals. Once a young kitten scratched him. He was 
astonished and looking at the kitten’s paws, immediately bit off 
the claws. Animals, monkeys especially, use sticks and stones as 
instruments and weapons. A party of baboons in Africa were at- 
tacked by men at the entrance of a narrow pass in the mountains. 
The animals were up on the mountain side, and rolled the stones 
down into the pass so thick and fast that for a time it was com- 
pletely blockaded. The orang in Borneo knows how to handle 
and throw sticks in the same manner, and even makes himself a 
bed in the tree to sleep at night, covering his head with leaves? 
Humboldt refers to the horses and mules used in crossing the 
Andes. “Thus the mountaineers are heard to say, ‘I will not 
give you the mule whose step is the easiest, but the one which 
has the most intelligence.’ 
It is hardly possible in the limits of an article like this, to do 
justice to our subject, but we are sure that what little has been 
said, will show to a fair and impartial reader, that animals cer- 
tainly do possess a large amount of reason. There may be those . 
who prefer to think that instincts are given to animals in a per- 
fect form, by the Almighty. These seem to think that in taking 
the matter out of the Creator’s hands directly, and placing all 
animal life under the contro! of natural laws, that we thereby de- 
tract from His power. But not so. For He-made the Jaws by 
means of which animal life has progressed on the globe, and after 
the establishment of these laws, He holds Himself aloof from in- 
terfering. It is more degrading to the grandeur of the Infinite to 
Suppose He has been compelled to interfere constantly with the 
works of His hands, than to suppose that He has, in the first place, 
established laws immutable and unchangeable, and endowed the 
first germs of life with the possibilities which have led to such 
Srand results as are visible in the animal kingdom. 
* Wallace, Malay Archipelago, N. Y. ed., p. 52, 70. 
? Travels in Equatorial Regions of South America, I, 249. 
