WAYS OF NATURE 



they did get the stick through, it was always by 

 chance. 



It has never been necessary that the dog or his 

 ancestors should know how to fetch long sticks 

 through a narrow opening in a fence. Hence he 

 does not know the trick of it. But we have a little 

 bird that knows the trick. The house wren will 

 carry a twig three inches long through a hole of 

 half that diameter. She knows how to manage it 

 because the wren tribe have handled twigs so long 

 in building their nests that this knowledge has 

 become a family instinct. 



What we call the intelligence of animals is limited 

 for the most part to sense perception and sense 

 memory. We teach them certain things, train them 

 to do tricks quite beyond the range of their natural 

 intelligence, not because we enlighten their minds 

 or develop their reason, but mainly by the force of 

 habit. Through repetition the act becomes auto- 

 matic. Who ever saw a trained animal, unless it be 

 the elephant, do anything that betrayed the least 

 spark of conscious intelligence ? The trained pig, or 

 the trained dog, or the trained lion does its "stunt" 

 precisely as a machine would do it — without any 

 more appreciation of what it is doing. The trainer 

 and public performer find that things must always 

 be done in the same fixed order; any change, any- 

 thing unusual, any strange sound, light, color, or 

 movement, and trouble at once ensues. 



166 



