Do Animals Reason ? 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
In your issue of Feb. 22, appears an article by 
Julian Burroughs, entitled “Do Animals Rea¬ 
son,” in which he cites several incidents in sup¬ 
port of the theory that animals cannot reason. 
To illustrate the reasoning capacity of the boy, 
he relates the story of the molasses barrel. Has 
he ever seen one dog attack another because the 
latter attempted to dig up a bone buried by the 
former? If the act of the boy showed reason, 
to what do we attribute the action of the dog? 
As to the illustration of a dozen dogs placed 
in a room with their water supply in a tall, easily 
upset vessel, in my opinion if the dogs did not 
upset the vessel in their endeavors to get at the 
water, the situation would then indeed be un¬ 
usual. Lock a starving man in a room with a 
securely sealed jar of milk. The only way to 
secure any of the milk will be to break the jar. 
which will quickly be done. Most* of the milk 
will be wasted, but the man’s reason tells him 
the only way to get any of the milk is to break 
the jar. If you want a fair test, place one intelli¬ 
gent dog in such a situation as described, and re¬ 
fill the vessel a couple of times; then watch re¬ 
sults. I know of a couple of dogs that I think 
would not spill the water after a couple of such 
lessons. 
Regarding the illustration of the hungry, 
chained-up dog and the hooked stick: Hundreds 
of times have I seen a dog when eating food out 
'of a tin pan on a smooth floor, place one foot 
in the dish to keep it from sliding away as he 
ate. Has Mr. Burroughs ever seen a dog carry 
the vessel in which its food is usually supplied, 
to the kitchen door, and there attract the atten¬ 
tion of the cook or housewife by scraping on the 
door or whining? Has he ever seen a cat jump 
up on the kitchen sink and there keep on meow¬ 
ing until somebody came and allowed the water 
to drip for it to get a drink? Is it reason or in¬ 
stinct that influences such actions? 
Would it not be as fair to condemn Lloyd 
Morgan as lacking reasoning powers if he failed 
to understand after a few minutes’ study the 
workings of some complicated piece of machin¬ 
ery with which he was not familiar, as to con¬ 
demn hfs dog for failing to carry the cane 
through the narrow opening in the fence? Did 
the presence of the master urging the dog to 
bring the cane rattle and fluster the dog, as hap¬ 
pens so often with reasoning human beings 
when their superiors are overseeing a particu¬ 
larly difficult task? 
Further on Mr. Burroughs states, “If a dog 
built ever so small a dam in a brook to make a 
puddle in which to cool himself on a hot day, 
this would be an act of reason.” On a cold night 
why does the house dog prefer to sleep on a 
chair or couch, and on a warm night why does 
he throw himself on the floor? Is it instinct or 
reason that tells him he will escape the cold 
draft on the floor by getting on a chair? At the 
present time I own a very intelligent pointer dog 
that on cold days regularly goes to a closet where 
spare comfortables are kept, helps himself to one 
and then goes to a couch or bed, and covers him¬ 
self up with it as well as a person could do it. 
Where we formerly lived this same animal would 
regularly carry a cushion from a couch, place it 
on the hard wooden arm of a Morris chair and, 
coiling himself up on the chair with his head 
resting on the soft cushion, gaze out the window 
for hours at a time watching the sights of the 
city street. We knew nothing of this until some 
neighbors across the street called our attention 
to it, and we then saw the performance our¬ 
selves. Was this an act of reason, or was it in¬ 
stinct that induced the dog to cover the hard arm 
of the chair with a cushion to rest his head on? 
Was not the incident of the shepherd dog run¬ 
ning around the barn to get in the rear of the 
other dog on a par with the conduct of two po¬ 
lice officers who had discovered a burglar in a 
certain house and, while one officer watched the 
front of the house, the other went around the 
rear to cut off the burglar’s retreat? A daring 
burglar w T as thus captured and two officers re¬ 
suggested that we go back over the same terri¬ 
tory but keep a hundred yards or so inside the 
edge of the woods. Some two hundred yards 
from where we started to return one of my dogs 
began to make game in a very lively manner, and I 
called to my companion to come over, but before 
he reached me my dog started trailing and I fol¬ 
lowed. Every twenty-five or thirty yards the 
dog would point for a moment and then go on, 
indicating the birds were running. For almost a 
quarter of a mile through woods of mixed pines 
and oaks I followed the dog at such a fast clip 
that my friend was left behind almost out of 
hearing. Then suddenly the dog dashed off to 
the left and circled around, intercepting the line 
we were traveling in some seventy or seventy- 
five yards ahead, where he whipped up on a 
point facing me and immediately a good-sized 
bunch of quail took wing, scattering in all direc¬ 
tions. Was it an act of reason on my part to 
look for the birds inside the woods when we had 
not found them in the fields, and, if so; how 
does it differ from the action of the dog in cir¬ 
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SKUNK CABBAGE. DOG TOOTH VIOLET. 
ceived great praise for the ruse employed. Was 
the action of- the officers the result of reason, 
while that of the dog was simply instinct? 
On my last quail hunt of the season, Dec. 28, 
1907, a friend and I tramped over field after 
field and our dogs showed no sign of the pres¬ 
ence of birds anywhere. Remarking that the 
birds had evidently not yet been out to feed, I 
cling around the birds he knew were running? 
I own another pointer which hates water as 
much as any cat, and will not wet his feet if he 
can avoid it. While gunning along a stream in 
November I shot a woodcock which fell in the 
water fifty or sixty feet from the bank. The 
water was full of thin cakes of ice and I had no 
way of getting to the bird without wading in up 
