Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/233

Rh a noise resembling that of distant thunder. My dog became terror stricken at the sound; but, as soon as I brought him to the apple-room and showed him the true cause of the noise, he became again buoyant and cheerful as usual. Another dog I had used to play at tossing dry bones to give them the appearance of life. As an experiment, I one day attached a fine thread to a dry bone before giving him the latter to play with; and, after he had tossed the bone about for a while as usual, I stood a long way off and slowly began to draw it away from him. So soon as he perceived that the bone was really moving on its own account, his whole demeanor changed, and rushing under a sofa he waited horror-stricken to watch the uncanny spectacle of a dry bone coming to life. I have also greatly frightened this dog by blowing soap-bubbles along the floor; one of these he summoned courage enough to touch with his paw, but as soon as it vanished he ran out of the room, terrified at so mysterious a disappearance. Lastly, I have put this dog into a paroxysm of fear by taking him into a room alone and silently making a series of horrible grimaces. Although I had never in my life hurt this dog, he became greatly frightened at my unusual behavior, which so seriously conflicted with his general idea of uniformity in matters psychological. But I have tried this experiment with less intelligent dogs without any other result than that of causing them to bark at me.

Of course in thus claiming for animals the power of forming general conceptions, I mean only such general conceptions as can be arrived at by the logic of feelings. So far, then, as the logic of feelings can carry them, I maintain that the intellectual operations of animals are indistinguishable from those of ourselves. For having thus shown that animals possess the faculty of abstraction, I shall now go on to show that they possess the faculties both of judgment and of reason. My friend Dr. Rae, the well-known traveler and naturalist, knew a dog in Orkney which, used to accompany his master to church on alternate Sundays. To do so he had to swim a channel about a mile wide; and before taking to the water he used to run about a mile to the north when the tide was flowing, and a nearly equal distance to the south when the tide was ebbing, "almost invariably calculating his distance so well that he landed at the nearest point to the church." In his letter to me Dr. Rae continues: "How the dog managed to calculate the strength of the spring and neap tides at their various rates of speed, and always to swim at the proper angle, is most surprising."

So much, then, for judgment. For some good instances of reasoning in animals I am also indebted to Dr. Rae. Desiring to obtain some arctic foxes, he set various kinds of traps; but, as the foxes knew these traps from previous experience, he was unsuccessful. Accordingly, he set a kind of trap with which the foxes in that part of the country were not acquainted. This consisted of a loaded gun set upon a stand pointing at the bait. A string connected the trigger of the