178 



ON SAGACITY AND INSTINCT. 



his master's home ; it might teach the carrier pigeon to seek the spot 

 where it was hatched, and where it had always been fed, but it would 

 not teach this bird to carry a letter to a strange place and return with 

 an answer ; and if a pigeon were to do this, it would be something more 

 than mere instinct. The cat, if removed to a vast distance from its 

 home, will return; but the dog will find his master, and evince affec- 

 tion for him, and not for his house ; and this is the difference between 

 instinct and reason. In the first instance, the cat is only attached to 

 her home, because there she has always found food and shelter ; but the 

 dog would not remain if his master left it, but would follow him ; and 

 instinct, I am convinced, is not the only faculty employed in this 

 instance. 



I knew a horse, which, if put into a hox or shed by itself, would 

 open the latch, and thus escape. Now, instinct would have taught him 

 to kick at the door, and get out by violence, and not to effect his pur- 

 pose by this deliberate and indirect manner; but he must have observed 

 the effect previously, and employed, if not reason, a higher faculty than 

 instinct. 



Some of your readers may recollect the elephant which a few years 

 since performed at the Adelphi Theatre, and, as far as I am a judge, 

 showed as much talent and reason (or sagacity, or whatever else it may 

 be called), as any of the other performers. Witness also Ducrow's 

 horses ; and I might relate numerous anecdotes of what is called "saga- 

 city " in animals ; but as they may be seen in almost every work upon 

 the subject, as well as in the " Percy Anecdotes," I will not trespass 

 further upon your time and pages, but refer your readers to the works 

 mentioned ; and in conclusion merely say, that there are, as I conceive, 

 different grades of reason, from the most enlightened man to inferior 

 animals ; from the philosopher to the herdsman ; from the white to the 

 black (but here I speak generally, for we have many negroes who 

 would shame the majority of Englishmen in literary attainments), and 

 from the black to the savage ; and I do not know in what respect the 

 cannibal is superior to other animals : he possesses instinct, but no 

 more, and perhaps not so much reason as the horse, the dog, or the 

 elephant. 



I have often wondered at the extraordinary though well-known 

 habit of the cuckoo, of laying in the nests of other birds, but have never 

 been able to account for it. Since writing the above, however, I have 

 thought, as this bird no doubt lays several eggs, and as I know from 



