426 
in a talking mood, being tired and hungry. I was sitting 
on the side next the river and noticed a black object which 
at first I mistook for a stone, partly out of the water; 
but With a second, and rrtoffi searching look, I made it out 
to be a bear coming straight toward the canoe. 
I gave warning to the man in the bow, who stood a 
few feet in front of me, and he immediately gave a sharp 
tug oh the tow line, which checked the men ashore. The 
bear by this time Was about five of six yards from the 
canoe, and just opposite me. I saw that nothing would 
flow stop him from climbing into and across the canoe. 
Before he could place his paw on the side of the bark the 
matt in the bow made a savage lunge at him with his 
pike pole, but before he could give a second blow the 
bear was in on my side and out on the other, right across 
our legs. Our men of the tow had run back, the man 
in the stern being too far off to be of any use, had the 
jsresenee of mind to throw an armful of paddles, which 
being of maple, made formidable weapons. When the 
bear got out on the shore side they rained blows upon 
blows with the sharp blades of the paddles upon his head 
and body as they could get a chance. The bow man 
sprang ashore and lent his assistance with his formidable 
pole, but marvelous as it may sound, the bear escaped 
into the bush in spite of all that his assailants could do to 
prevent him. 
Long into the night about the dying embers of the 
camp-fire, I heard the men going over the whole scene 
and blaming one another for not having done some- 
thing they ought to have done. 
One other instance, I will give of a bear's persistency 
to go straight in the water, and in this case it. was fatal to 
two men. 
Two newly married couples left the mouth of the Moisie 
for the interior. Their third day up stream brought them 
to a place where, off to one side in the bush about a mile 
back, was a noted lake for trout and whitefish. It was 
decided that they should portage one canoe, and with their 
blankets, net and cooking utensils go and pass the. night 
on the lake shore. One gun was all the men took (a 
flintlock — for this was years ago). Shortly after arriv- 
ing at the lake a bear was seen swimming from the other 
side, coming toward where the Indians were tying their 
net. The two young men jumped into the canoe and 
pushed out to meet him, which was a fatal mistake. The 
man in the bow waited till the bear was within a couple 
of yards off from the bow, and then pulled the trigger. 
The old gun flashed in the pan, but there. was no report. 
The next instant the bear clambered over the head of 
the canoe and rolled the occupants into the water. The 
young brides of a few days ran screaming along shore, 
unable to render any assistance to their husbands, and 
actually witnessed both drown before their very eyes. 
I remember the arrival of the two poor women back 
to the coast, and the relation of their pathetic story. To 
make the case much more remarkable, they were twins 
by birth, and twin widows by this tragedy. 
A word of advice after the foregoing illustrations of the 
danger in getting in front of a swimming bear is hardly 
now necessary, but one cannot impress too forcibly the 
danger in attacking a bear by a frontal move. Always 
approach a bear in the water either on one side or from 
the rear. You can paddle up quite close to a bear in 
the direction he is swimming without the least particle 
of danger, and a more vital and telling spot to fire at 
cannot be got than the back and base of the skull. 
Martin Hunter. 
Man and Brute. 
Are the Most Intelligent Animals Superior to the 
Lowest Races of Men? 
The Bushmen of South Africa never wash — have no 
clothing or' cookery; no sense of decency, modesty or 
shame. They have no natural affection, no domestic life, 
no attachment to kindred, and kill their children when- 
ever food is scarce. The New Caledonians have no 
capacity for education, no gratitude, are utterly insensible 
to kindness, and bury their aged alive. The Andaman 
Islanders are as untamable as gorillas — possess no prop- 
erty, individual or tribal ; have no legislation or laws, no 
history, no commerce or agriculture, no industry, no arts, 
no money or coinage, no form of government, and never 
laugh. The Veddas have no spoken language, no moral 
sentiment, no idea of God or a future life, were ignorant 
of the use of fire, and have no fixed shelter or dwellings. 
The Caribs were cannibals, eating their parents or chil- 
dren, they had neither weapons nor tools, and no form 
of worship. They lived like the beasts of the forest, 
having all of their vices, but not one of their nobler traits. 
The lower animals possess the following emotions: Sur- 
prise, fear, sexual and paternal affection, social feelings, 
pugnacity, industry, curiosity, jealousy, anger, play, affec- 
tion, sympathy, emulation, pride, resentment, aesthetic 
love of ornament, terror, grief, hate, cruelty, benevolence, 
revenge, rage, shame, deceit, remorse, and perception of 
the ludicrous. Darwin, Pierquin, Lindsay, Huxley, and 
other eminent naturalists, assert the mental and moral 
superiority of the more intellectual animals over the low- 
est and most degraded races of men. 
Among the lower animals are to be found carpenters, 
soldiers, sailors, plasterers, masons, hunters, trappers^ 
spinners, weavers, farmers, shepherds, anglers, engineers, 
tailors, sextons, stock-breeders and musicians. The tools 
they use are files, augers, saws, chisels, hammers, pincers, 
trowels, needles, drills, shovels, brushes, combs and awls. 
They make pleasure gardens, roads, streets, nets, rafts, 
hammocks, traps, balloons, diving-bells, paper, thread, 
doors with bolts and silken hinges; they build bridges! 
dams, forts and fortifications, and excavate canals, pit- 
falls and tunnels. They establish regular forms of gov- 
ernment and are ruled by kings, queens and war chiefs. 
They build cities, found colonies, and organize armies; 
they hold courts and parliaments, try offenders against 
their laws and customs, and punish the guilty by death or 
banishment. They can be trained and educated; they 
weep, laugh, smile, play, dance, sing and talk intelligent.lv 
in every language spoken in Europe; they can lock and 
unlock trunks and doors, eat with knife and fork, wear 
clothing, cook food, fire off guns, drink wine, smoke 
tobacco, ride on horseback, drive a team, throw stones, 
make use of tools, post sentinels, send out scouts and 
spies, form ambuscades, and capture prisoners to be held 
as slaves! Every species has a language, and they teach 
and train their young; they differ mentally as much as 
men; some are brilliant — others possess only ordinary 
abilities, and some are foolish or insane, Of all the 
bullfinches that are taught to pipe and canaries to sing, 
only a few distinguish themselves; and of the great num- 
bers of horses selected for circus-training, only very 
few have the necessary intelligence. That which we call 
reason in man we call instinct in the lower animals, but 
comparative psychologists are now agieed that the differ- 
ence between their mental faculties and ours is of degree 
and not of kind. The males of many species of wild ani- 
mals are ambitious and desire to become war-chiefs and 
leaders, and fight duels to the death with those already 
in power, and rival queens destroy each other. The 
gorilla sends his wife and children into the forest dingles 
and boldly meets the enemy alone. The leader. of a troop 
of wild horses dashes to the place where danger threatens 
and offers battle even to the grizzly bear. If defeated 
by a rival he is no longer leader, but loses all his author- 
ity, and becomes at once a private in the troop. 
The opossum and many species of insects feign death 
when they find resistance useless and escape impossible; 
and birds which build their nests upon the ground try 
to lead their enemies away from eggs or young by a 
vain pursuit of themselves as they pretend to flutter off 
with broken wings. Parrots have been taught to speak 
more languages than one, and Darwin tells about one in 
South America that spoke a dialect that no person under- 
stood — every one of the Indian tribe to whom he had 
belonged having been carried off by some epidemic. 
These birds use words intelligently, speak sense and to 
the purpose, and are capable of hearty and spontaneous 
laughter. Dogs have been known to slip their collars 
HAND OF GORILLA. 
off, go miles from home and worry sheep, wash off the 
blood, and returning to their kennels before daylight 
work their collars on again. They have appeared as wit- 
nesses in murder cases in Dundee, Scotland, so recently 
as 1873, and their evidence has not unfrequently been 
accepted as conclusive. Animals reason, dream, walk in 
their sleep, and many talking birds make use of human 
language more intelligently than whole races of savage 
men. Certain animals are tool and weapon-makers, 
breaking off and trimming up the stems and branches of 
trees, and using them as war-clubs, fans or sunshades; 
and others have regular cemeteries to which they retire 
to die. The Australian bower bird makes a long platform 
of woven grass and reeds, and over this an arch of the 
same materials, and then decorates this pleasure gallery 
with beautiful sea shells, colored pebbles from the shore, 
the feathers of tropical birds, and if diamond rings or 
other articles of jewelry should be lost in the open air 
they are almost sure to be found in the gaily furnished 
halls of these remarkable birds. The tailor bird, using 
a thread if he can find it, or a piece of vegetable fiber 
if he cannot, ties a knot at the end, and using his slender 
bill instead of a needle, sews two leaves together for his 
nest almost as neatly as a person could; and the first 
hammock was swung by the orioles before man appeared 
upon the earth. A fox'has been seen to enter a stream 
where ducks were feeding and float down toward them, 
his whole body immersed, except his head, which he 
covered with a leafy bough. The spotted hyena coutner- 
feits the bleat of a lamb. 
The anthropoid apes are the most intelligent of all the 
lower animals and the difference in volume of brain 
between the highest and the lowest man is at least six 
times as great as the difference between the lowest man 
aud the highest ape. They were employed as torch- 
bearers, workmen and artisans by the ancient Egyptians; 
on shipboard they help to reef and furl the sails, light 
a fire, cook food, dust furniture, clean the floor and sew 
with needle and thread. The possession of hands, similar 
to those of man's, which enable apes and monkeys to 
take up and examine things, give them a very great ad- 
vantage over every other animal except the elephant, 
which can pick up a pin with the finger of his trunk. 
The Hindoo god of wisdom is figured with the body of 
a man and the head of an elephant. As animals gain 
knowledge from experience and learn of others, it will 
be readily perceived that an elephant a hundred years 
old or more, especially if he has been long trained and 
educated by man, would possess extraordinary intelli- 
gence. He has the largest and most perfectly formed 
cerebrum, in proportion to the size of the entire body, 
of any quadruped whatever. He will break off and trim 
up a leafy branch with which to brush away the flies, 
nsing it as a person would a fan; he can draw the cork 
from a bottle of wine and drink the contents without 
spilling a drop; he understands the meaning of human 
speech and signs, and will obey every command of his 
master. When the Mahommedans first invaded India, 
their elephants, obeying secret signals from their drivers, 
tore down and trampled under their feet the Hindoo 
idols, but the followers of the Prophet said that the in- 
telligent animals did it because they detested all idolatry. 
An English traveler in India once saw a driver dismount 
from his elephant, tie the animal to a tree, build an oven, 
start a fire and put in his rice cakes to cook. He then 
covered the oven over with stones and grass and went 
away. After he had been gone a short time the elephant 
untied the rope, went to the oven, took out and ate the 
cakes, then, after carefully replacing the stoves and grass, 
went back to the tree, and, as he could not tie the rope 
as it was before, he wrapped it around his leg, and stood 
looking away from the oven, but watching the keeper, 
when he came, all the time out of the corner' of his eye. 
An officer of the English army in India had a favorite 
elephant which was daily given a liberal allowance of 
food, but being compelled to go on a journey the "keeper 
reduced the ration so much that the elephant became thin 
and weak. When the master returned the animal ex- 
hibited the liveliest signs of pleasure, and when feeding 
time came again the man gave it its full allowance of 
food, which it carefully divided into two parts, eating one 
but leaving the other untouched. The officer, knowing 
the great intelligence of his favorite, saw at once the 
fraud that had been practiced, and made the keeper con- 
fess his crime. 
Ants. 
Sir John Lubbock says: 'When we consider the habits 
of ants, their social organization, their large communi- 
ties and elaborate habitations; their roadways, their pos- 
session of domestic animals, and even in some cases of 
slaves, it must be admitted that they have a fair claim to 
rank next to man in the scale of intelligence." Some 
species of Central American ants prepare beds of de- 
cayed vegetable matter for the purpose of growing the 
mushrooms on which they feed. The agricultural ants 
of Texas sow the seed of the ant rice, cultivate the 
growing crop, carefully removing every weed and blade 
of grass, reap the ripened harvest, separate the grain 
from the chaff, and store it away in granaries for future 
use. If it should show any signs of sprouting they carry 
it all into the open air and dry it carefully in the sun. 
The driver ants organize armies under the command of 
war-chiefs and captains who throw forward scouts and 
skirmishers, direct the line of march, enforce discip- 
line and lead the advance. No animal can resist the fury 
of their attack — every living thing in the forest flees be- 
fore them— lion, leopard and ape— behind them are only 
the skeletons of their victims. Whole villages are de- 
serted on their approach, and the people do not return 
to their homes until assured that the ant army has gone 
elsewhere. These warriors are totally blind, and cannot 
endure the light of the sun, and when they emerge from 
the forest and come under his rays they construct covered 
galleries of moistened earth along their line of march, 
and continue their advance under cover of these arches. 
Ants have a language of their own, and talk to each other 
with their antennae. If a stranger of the same species 
is introduced into a city containing a million ants, she 
is recognized as an intruder and immediately attacked. 
The Amazons are cleaned, fed and waited on by their 
slaves, and without these they could not live, for they have 
lost even the power of feeding themselves. They carry 
their masters on their backs whenever they change their 
place of residence— the slaves alone building the new 
home. Some species of ants carefully bury their dead, 
and others make war for the sole purpose of capturing 
slaves. The owner of a maple tree, seeing that it was 
infested with ants and aphides, poured a ring of tar 
around it. The first ants that tried tp cross of course 
stuck fast, but the. others, returning to the tree, carried 
down aphides which they stuck down on the tar, one after 
another, until they had made a bridge on which they 
could cross in safety. Ants possess a greater variety of 
domestic animals than have ever been brought under the 
dominion of man, and as some of them are useless, they 
are supposed by some authorities to be kept as pets.. 
Ants are so fond of the honey-dew of the aphides that 
they have domesticated these little animals and keep them 
for their cows. They protect them from their enemies, 
care for their eggs and young, milk them when they 
want a drink, and with finely tempered earth build little 
stables in which to keep them. The termites build houses 
twenty feet high, and so large that a dozen men can find 
shelter in a single chamber. Their walls are so strong 
that the buffalo uses them for watchtowers, and they 
are palaces compared with the huts of the Bushmen. 
Instinct is that faculty of the mind by which animals 
perform certain work without any previous experience, 
and such labor is always performed in the same manner 
by every member of the same species; there is never any 
change to meet' new conditions, and consequently no 
improvement. That ants possess reason no one who 
understands their habits can ever doubt; yet it seems 
most probable that instinct reaches in them its most 
perfect development. In many respects they are certainly 
the most wonderful animals upon the earth. 
Spiders. 
The Australian trap-door spider makes hinges to open 
the lid of her nest and bolts to keep it closed; and so 
skillfully is her little home concealed that it is not often 
that one is found. Sometimes she plasters over the lid 
with moistened clay, and then makes an artificial crack 
across it; or, if it will harmonize better with its surround- 
ings, she will plant a blade of grass or a bit of moss 
upon it. Mahomet, flying before a tribe of idolatrous 
Arabs who were determined to put an end to his religion 
by taking his life, sought shelter in a cave, and soon after 
a spider wove her web across the opening. On arriving 
at the cavern his enemies, perceiving the web to be un- 
broken, at once decided that he could not be concealed 
in it, and without entering continued the pursuit. Now, 
the spider, of course, had no intention of helping the 
Prophet, but her act did, in fact, change the whole his- 
