420 
ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 
should be justified in suppressing it. And, after all, 
regarded as an act of reason, the sprinkling of crumbs to 
attract birds does not involve ideas or inferences verv 
much more abstruse or remote than those which are con- 
cerned in some of the other and better corroborated 
instances of the display of feline intelligence, vrhich I shall 
now proceed to state. 
In the understanding of mechanical appliances, cats 
attain to a higher level of intelligence than any other 
animals, except monkeys, and perhaps elephants. Doubt- 
less it is not accidental that these three kinds of animals 
fall to be associated in this particular. The monkey in 
its hands, the elephant in its trunk, and the cat in its 
agile limbs provided with mobile claws, all possess instru- 
ments adapted to manipulation, with w T hich no other organs 
in the brute creation can properly be compared, except the 
beak and toes of the parrot, where, as we have already 
seen, a similar correlation with intelligence may be traced. 
Probably, therefore, the higher aptitude which these 
animals display in their understanding of mechanical 
appliances is due to the reaction exerted upon their inteb 
gence by these organs of manipulation. But, be this as 
it may, I am quite sure that, excepting only the monkey 
and elephant, the cat shows a higher intelligence of the 
special kind in question than any other animal, not for- 
getting even the dog. Thus, for instance, while I have 
only heard of one solitary case (communicated to me by a 
correspondent) of a dog which, without tuition, divined the 
use of a thumb-latch, so as to open a closed door by 
jumping upon the handle and depressing the thumb-piece, 
I have received some half-dozen instances of this display 
of intelligence on the part of cats. These instances are 
all such precise repetitions of one another, that I conclude 
the fact to be one of tolerably ordinary occurrence among 
cats, while it is certainly very rare among dogs. I may 
add that my own coachman once had a cat which, cer- 
tainly without tuition, learnt thus to open a door that led 
into the stables from a yard into which looked some of the 
windows of the house. Standing at these windows when 
the cat did not see me, I have manv times witnessed hex 
