BIRDS— GENERAL INTELLIGENCE. 
311 
this way than birds, on account of their depending so 
much upon smell for their information. No doubt indi- 
vidual differences are to be met with in animals of both 
classes, and much depends on previous experience. Young 
dogs, or dogs which have never seen a mirror before, are 
not, as a rule, difficult to deceive, even though they have 
good noses. I myself had a setter with an excellent nose, 
who on many repeated occasions tried to fight his own 
image, till he found by experience that it was of no use. 
As to birds, I have seen canaries suppose their own images 
to be other canary birds, and also the reflection of a room 
to be another room — the birds flying against a large 
mirror and falling half stunned. I mention the latter 
circumstance because it afforded evidence of the superior 
intelligence of a linnet, which on the same occasion dashed 
itself against the mirror once, but never a second time, 
while the canaries did so repeatedly. 
Mrs. Frankland, in 6 Nature ? (xxi., p. 82 ), gives the fol- 
lowing account of a bullfinch paying more attention to a 
portrait of a bullfinch than to his own image in a mirror, 
which is certainly remarkable ; and as the fact seems to have 
been observed repeatedly, it can scarcely be discredited : 
The following is a curious instance of discrimination which 
I have observed in my bullfinch. He is in the habit of coming 
out of bis cage in my room in the morning. In this room there 
is a min or with a marble slab before it, and also a very cleverly 
executed water-colour drawing of a hen bullfinch, life size. The 
first thing that my bullfinch does on leaving his cage is to fly to 
the picture (perching on a vase just below it) and pipe his tune 
in the most insinuating manner, accompanied with much bow- 
ing to the portrait of the hen bullfinch. After having duly 
paid his addresses to it, he generally spends some time on the 
marble slab in front of the looking-glass, but without showing 
the slightest emotion at the sight of his own reflection, or 
courting it with a song. Whether this perfect coolness is due 
to the fact of the reflection being that of a cock bird, or whether 
(since he shows no desire to fight the reflected image) he is per- 
fectly well aware that he only sees himself, it is difficult to say. 
That birds possess considerable powers of imagination, 
or forming mental pictures of absent objects, may be in- 
