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and fraternity of the lower animals with man, he gets back at last into the domain, which has been happily designated that of organised common sense, when he sums up the attributes in which man is superior to the animals, as he does in the following words :

'Civilised man possesses the following elements of superiority over other animals:

1. The power of speech.

2. The use of hands.

3. Knowledge of the arts of

(a) Writing.

(b) Printing.
(c) Metallurgy.
(d) Glassmaking.
(e) Cooking.

4. The production and applications of fire.

It is extremely difficult for man to realise the magnitude or importance of these advantages in the development of his moral and mental nature, and to make due allowance for the disadvantage under which other animals labour in the non-possession of these accomplishments.'

In this we most entirely and unconditionally agree. The task is so difficult, indeed, that Dr. Lindsay has utterly failed to accomplish it, or he would at once have perceived that the things which he thus enumerates are exactly the circumstances which warrant the induction that the lower animals are inferior to man; and instead of confining to five or six heads the arts in which man excels, he might have extended them to every act of civilised life.

Whilst glancing at what he terms unsolved problems in the 'psychology of the lower animals,' Dr. Lindsay gives careful attention to the curious circumstance that many of the lower animals find their way with readiness and precision where man is hopelessly at fault, and he inclines to attribute this power to the presence of a sixth supplementary sense, which confers upon them an intuitive knowledge of the points of the compass, or something of the kind. In many instances this power of self-guidance manifestly depends on keen observation and retentive memory. It is so with the horse in travelling through strange country. Attention to landmarks, memory, and attachment to home often enable it to strike out a correct path through the wilderness, and especially in the dusk twilight hour, when its rider is entirely without any serviceable clue. The dog will do even more astonishing things. Lindsay reproduces the narrative of the Scotch collie which shipped himself home, entirely amongst strangers, from Calcutta

Dr.

to Inverkeithing, in Fifeshire, on board a ship bound for Dundee. He first went to Dundee, and then changed his ship there for another just starting for Inverkeithing. It is here quite manifest that the dog must have been unconsciously rather than rationally led. There was some familiar sight, sound, or smell on board the Dundee ship which attracted his regard and induced him to establish himself on board, and in the same way when he reached Dundee he found something there which was redolent and suggestive of Fife. The case of the crossing of wide tracts of sea, and often for considerable distances during night, by migratory birds, is a more difficult one to understand; but it is probable that they are guided in their flight by some extension of the acuteness of their ordinary senses rather than by the operation of a distinct one not yet known to man. It is a well-settled fact that the sight, the hearing, and the smell are very much more acute in some animals than they are in man. The keenness of both sight

and smell in the vulture, the sharpness of hearing in the horse and in rabbits and hares, and the acuteness of smell in sporting dogs are well known to everyone. There certainly are sonorous vibrations distinguished by insects which are quite imperceptible to man. It is very probable, therefore, that migratory birds are guided in their nocturnal passage over the sea by perceptions of an ordinary sensual class, operating upon organs of exceptionally delicate capacity and structure.

Amongst the numerous circumstances which Dr. Lindsay adduces in support of his notion of the mental equality of the lower animals with man, he places the influence of alcohol. He says that, although in some rare instances the lower animals have the force of will, or the good sense, to stop in time in their tippling, there is always the danger that the liking for strong drink may become a craving, and that the craving may grow into an insatiable and irresistible impulse, and at last amount to actual dipsomania and incurable disease. A cock alluded to by Dr. Magnan, of Paris, that had acquired a fondness for absinthe, used to drink of it until he fell, as if lifeless, and lay motionless upon the ground, and then after a short time would try to get up, but fail and fall back beating the air with his wings, and scraping up the soil. Nevertheless, as soon as he was able, he returned to his tippling, as Dr. Lindsay remarks, 'just as though he were as stupid as a man.' In the year 1864 the people of Dublin used to flock in crowds to the Zoological Gardens to see a Natal lion take its whiskypunch, which the noble beast did on the Sunday before its death, 'just as if it had been a Christian.' The parrot, notwith

standing the astuteness of its ordinary conversation, becomes garrulous upon wine. Rats broach beer, wine, and spirit casks without any encouragement or teaching from man, and get dead drunk whenever they have the opportunity. A cat of weak brain became so inordinately fond of porter that in the end she forswore milk for the more seductive beverage. The horse becomes vicious and unmanageable when inebriated. It appears that, upon the whole, champagne is the favourite tipple among the lower animals. But the crowning instance of the equality of the lower animals with man in the intellectual privilege of drunkenness is that of a jelly-fish which rolled about in the water when it was tipsy, 'just like the staggering of a drunken man,' and then sank into a state of torpid insensibility from which nothing could arouse it. These instances, and very many others of a similar nature, appear inferentially to have been brought together to support the argument that the lower animals are mentally like man. It is nevertheless not possible to doubt that Dr. Lindsay, as a physician naturalist,' is quite aware that alcohol in reality exerts its peculiar physical influence upon all parts of the nervous structures, the lowest as well as the highest. When men become insensible from strong drink, it is clearly the seat of sensational consciousness, or the sensorium, which is paralysed by the narcotic agent; and this is that part of the brain-structure which is most certainly shared with man by at least all the lower vertebrata. Dr. Lindsay conceives that the mental equality of the lower animals with man entitles them to share in many of the social advantages which in a state of advanced civilisation he provides for his own kind. He thinks that, if it is incumbent upon him to maintain aged people in their declining years, the same thing should assuredly be done for animals whose only fault is the decrepitude of age; that there should be well-appointed asylums for the old, and that testamentary dispositions in favour of animals should cease to be regarded as evidence of incapacity or insanity in the testator, as in the case of the Viennese lady, contested in a law court in 1874, in which the testator had left her whole fortune to twelve pet cats, their legitimate offspring, and the custodians of these feline legatees, existent and to come. There should be arrangements for boarding out animals during the holiday excursions of the human members of the family. There should be hospitals for special diseases, and above all things for the insane. There should be establishments of this class for the horse, the dog, the cat, and the ox-for song birds and for poultry. There should be sanatoria for convalescents, a sanitary organisation

VOL. CLII. NO. CCCXI.

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and inspection in zoological gardens and menageries, maternity charities for the solace of four-footed mothers, and of course reformatories as well as prisons for culprits. The only scruple which appears to have limited the benevolent aspirations of Dr. Lindsay in this direction seems to have been the possible doubt whether it was right to maintain bugs, fleas, and lice in vermin wards, and to give them periodical supplies of male and female human mendicants as food. It may be presumed, under all the circumstances, that it is not really a slip of the pen, as it seems to be at the first glance, when he speaks of the foundation, endowment, and support of institutions of this class as being dictated by the spirit of philanthropy.'

These utopian and fanciful schemes contain, however, some really practical suggestions, mingled with their fervid enthusiasm, which are worthy of kindly and respectful consideration at the hands of thoughtful and benevolent men. Water-troughs might assuredly be provided in towns for smaller domesticated animals, as well as for horses and oxen, and much might be taught in schools regarding the habits of the lower animals that would go far towards revolutionising the hard-handed and unsympathetic way in which they are too commonly treated by those who have them in charge. Dr. Lindsay recommends that there should be special lesson books for schools illustrating the habits and natural history of animals, and that formal instruction on the same subjects should be provided for the occupants of pulpits as well as for the attendants at schools, so that there may be more frequent allusions to such topics in sermons than are now met with. He suggests that prizes might be given in schools for intelligent observation of the habits of animals, and that pictorial representations of the best types of animal character should be exhibited at places of public resort, and particularly at railway stations. From this last allusion it would almost seem that he must have had in his mind the noble and touching dog portrait that makes its mute appeal against vivisection at most of the metropolitan railway stations, and that most probably has secured more converts than very many of the exaggerated and indiscriminate denunciations that have been uttered elsewhere. In one of the sections devoted to the treatment of the lower animals the following eloquent passage occurs:

It is perhaps too much to expect any radical change in opinion and practice in the present generation regarding the treatment that animals have a right to expect at man's hands. Our hopes naturally centre in the rising generation, in the proper education of the young of both sexes, in the principle and practice of humanity to animals, in

the application of the grand old golden rule of Scripture to all living sentient creatures. What our children have to learn, what they should be carefully taught, is that other animals, or at least those with whom we have most to do, think and feel as we do; are affected by the same influences, moral or physical; succumb to the same diseases, mental or bodily; are elevated or degraded in the social scale according to our treatment; may become virtuous and useful, or vicious and dangerous, just as we are appreciative, sympathetic, kindly disposed towards them.'

This is so true that, although we do not yet share with M. Houzeau his sanguine anticipation that monkeys may some day be taught to speak, we do participate with Frederika Bremer in the rational belief that nobler races of animals may be yet produced by better and more kindly treatment on the part of man.

In the training of animals the great secret of success is that their education shall be commenced at a very early age, and that it shall be conducted with the utmost patience and gentleness. In reference to the itinerant exhibitions known as happy families Dr. Lindsay remarks:

'It is astonishing what man can achieve in the training of animals by the practical application of such qualities as patience, perseverance, sympathy, kindness, mercy, if only the animals be taken in hand at a very early stage of their growth.'

It is equally certain that injudicious and cruel treatment exercises a very pernicious and degrading influence upon the character of animals, and that man is on this account responsible for much of the vicious behaviour that is met with amongst them.

'When a master is angry; when he is absurdly or cruelly severe in the form or degree of punishment administered; when punishment is inflicted on an innocent animal; when the punisher is a person whom the punished animal hates; when the animal is naturally irritable, or has been rendered unnaturally so by continuous ill usage; and, finally, when punishment is improperly administered to animals labouring under various kinds of disease, mental or bodily, it is but natural that viciousness in the man should beget viciousness in the animal; that the latter should acquire a dislike, perhaps permanent, both to its work and its master; that its character should be vitiated by the development of rancour, resentment, moroseness.'

The inherited character of animals, which has been first moulded by external circumstance, and then transmitted from parent to offspring, has of course something to do with the facility with which particular results in training can be secured. As Dr. Lindsay remarks, the first proceeding in the training

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