274 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



Mr. Carlile thought that the farmers would highly approve of the 

 establishment of such a useful department, and he thought the various 

 incorporated societies would assist in urging its formation. 



The President agreed with all that had been said. He now called 

 on Mr. Maskell to read his resolution. 



Resolution — "That in the opinion of this Society the establishment 

 of a well equipped expert Agricultural Department is of urgent necessity 

 in New Zealand." 



Mr. Harding, in seconding the resolution, said that if only in the 

 interests of economy, Mr. .Maskell's proposition deserved all support. 



The resolution was cariied, and a copy of it was ordered to be sent 

 to the Hon. Minister of Lands. 



(2) "On Animal Intelligence," by W W. Carlile, M.A. (Abstract.) 

 The importance of the study had come to be recognised only of late 

 years In the one fact of its having drawn attention to the great 

 principle of heredity, especially of the heredity of acquired faculty, it 

 had revolutionised the current mode of thought not only in psychology 

 but also in ethics, politics and history. Dr. Kuno Fischer in Ids work 

 on Francis Bacon of Verulam had contrasted the " Anglo-Gallic En- 

 lightenment " with the German, pointing out to what an extent the 

 prevalent mode of thought in the former from Bacon to Voltaire and 

 Rousseau, and from these to Mill and Macaulay, was anti-historical. 

 Of this the incurable breach with history in the French Revolution was 

 the practical outcome. If he had traced the course of English 

 empirical philosophy farther down, to the period subsequent to the 

 discovery of natural selection, then he would have found that it had 

 learnt to think historically, that it had converged with the stream of 

 German thought flowing in upon us through the channel of Carlyle's 

 writings. If Hegel or Carlyle affirmed that the whole past was with 

 us still in the depths of our present, the medern evolutionist said the 

 same and gave the scientific grounds of his belief. He cited some 

 passages in point from M r. Bagshot's "Physics and Politics." Principle 

 of heredity might in any case have been recognised, but Animal 

 Intelligence was for it the " Prserogativa installs," in regard to which it 

 could not be overlooked. Ribot mentioned case of small dog convulsed 

 with terror at scent of old piece of wolf's skin. The terrifying associa- 

 tions were drawn not from the animal's own consciousness but from 

 that of dead and buried ancestors. We were becoming familiar with 

 the notion of hereditary memory. Science might soon have to grasp 

 the idea of hereditary identity, and would then recognise that in a sense 

 Plato was right about the pro-existence of the soul. 



So much as to the importance of the study : as to its fascinations 

 we had all felt it, but on that very account had reckoned it trivial. 

 Only of late the attempt had been made from the scientific point of 

 view to collect authentic information about the display of incipient 

 reason in animals. Such an attempt was embodied in Professor 

 Romanes' book on Animal Intelligent e. 



