i74 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 



his own discretion in the country and the same person 

 when he has been toned down by long exposure to the 

 influences of refined society. On the accomplishments 

 acquired by animals it were superfluous to enter at any 

 length : but I may advert to the dogs of M. Leonard, as 

 remarkable examples of what the animal intellect may be 

 trained to. When four pieces of card are laid down be- 

 fore them, each having a number pronounced once in 

 connexion with it, they will, after a re-arrangement of 

 the pieces, select any one named by its number. They 

 also play at dominoes, and with so much skill as to tri- 

 umph over biped opponents, wining if the adversary 

 place a wrong piece, or if they themselves be deficient in 

 a right one. Of extensive combinations of thought we 

 have no reason to believe that any animal is capable— 

 and yet most of us must feel the force of Walter Scott's 

 remark, that there was scarcely anything which he would 

 not believe of a dog. There is a curious result of edu- 

 cation in certain animals, namely, that habits to which 

 they have been trained in some instances become heredi- 

 tary. For example, the accomplishment of pointing at 

 game, although a pure result of education, appears in the 

 young pups brought up apart from their parents and kind. 

 The peculiar leap of the Irish horse, acquired in the 

 course of traversing a boggy country, is continued in the 

 progeny brought up in England. This hereditariness ot 

 specific habits suggests a relation to that form of psycho- 

 logical demonstration usually called instinct ; but instinct 

 is only another term for mind, or is mind in a peculiar 

 stage of development; and though the fact were otherwise, 

 it could not affect the postulate, that demonstrations, such 

 as have been enumerated are mainly intellectual demon- 

 strations not to be distinguished as such from those of hu- 

 man beings. 



More than this, the lower animals manifested mental 

 phenomena long before man existed. While as yet there 

 was no brain capable of working out a mathematical 

 problem, the economy of the six-sided figure was exem- 

 plified by the instinct of the bee. Ere human musician 

 had whistled or piped, the owl hooted in B flat, the cuc- 

 koo had her song of a falling tVird, and the chirp of the 

 cricket was in B. The dog and the elephant prefigured 

 the sagacity of the human mind. The love of a human 

 mother for her babe was anticipated by nearly every 



