retriever tried to bring over both at once, but could not succeed; she
then, though never before known to ruffle a feather, deliberately
killed one, brought over the other, and returned for the dead bird.
Col. Hutchinson relates that two partridges were shot at once, one
being killed, the other wounded; the latter ran away, and was caught by
the retriever, who on her return came across the dead bird; she
stopped, evidently greatly puzzled, and after one or two trials,
finding she could not take it up without permitting the escape of the
winged bird, she considered a moment, then deliberately murdered it by
giving it a severe crunch, and afterwards brought away both together.
This was the only known instance of her ever having wilfully injured
any game. Here we have reason though not quite perfect, for the
retriever might have brought the wounded bird first and then returned
for the dead one, as in the case of the two wild-ducks. I give the
above cases, as resting on the evidence of two independent witnesses,
and because in both instances the retrievers, after deliberation, broke
through a habit which is inherited by them (that of not killing the
game retrieved), and because they shew how strong their reasoning
faculty must have been to overcome a fixed habit.
I will conclude by quoting a remark by the illustrious Humboldt. (28.
Personal Narrative, Eng. translat., vol. iii. p. 106.) The muleteers
in S. America say, I will not give you the mule whose step is easiest,
but la mas racional, the one that reasons best ; and; as, he adds,
this popular expression, dictated by long experience, combats the
system of animated machines, better perhaps than all the arguments of
speculative philosophy. Nevertheless some writers even yet deny that
the higher animals possess a trace of reason; and they endeavour to
explain away, by what appears to be mere verbiage, (29. I am glad to
find that so acute a reasoner as Mr. Leslie Stephen ( Darwinism and
Divinity, Essays on Free Thinking, 1873, p. 80), in speaking of the
supposed impassable barrier between the minds of man and the lower
animals, says, The distinctions, indeed, which have been drawn, seem
to us to rest upon no better foundation than a great many other
metaphysical distinctions; that is, the assumption that because you can
give two things different names, they must therefore have different
natures. It is difficult to understand how anybody who has ever kept a
dog, or seen an elephant, can have any doubt as to an animal s power of
performing the essential processes of reasoning. ) all such facts as
those above given.
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