CAN ANIMALS COUNT?
MY LITTLE readers have heard their elders when speaking of the Horse, Dog, Cat, and other dumb creatures call them the "lower" animals. Well, so they are, but when you have grown to be men and women you may possibly prefer the faithful affection and good comradeship of one of these lower animals to the disagreeable society of a cold, mean, and selfish "higher" one. Indeed, to learn how near akin are man and beast, mentally, not physically, men and women of large and tender natures have given up the greater part of their lives. Many stories have been written concerning the faithful love of animals for their masters, big and little, of their marvelous instinct and almost human cunning, but when I tell you that animals can be taught to count—and birds are animals, too, you know—why, then, if you are bright children you will wonder, as your elders do, where instinct ends and reason begins. However, these animals, of which I am going to write, may have been more than usually intelligent and capable of learning where others would not.
A few years ago a confectioner bought a Parrot, and, though the bird talked very plainly and volubly, the man was not satisfied. He desired his bird to display more cleverness than the ordinary Parrot, so he conceived the idea of teaching her to count. Polly didn't take to figures at all; but, though she listened with a great deal of patience to what her teacher had to say she uttered never a word. When at length he turned away discouraged, Polly croaked, "Shut up," and turned a double somersault on her perch, evidently very glad indeed that school was over.
Day after day Polly had her lesson, but count aloud she would not. Still the confectioner didn't give up the idea, and one day, to the bird's amazement her teacher, at lesson time, stood before the cage with a pan of water and a whisk broom in his hand. Dipping the broom in the water and flirting the drops over her head the teacher said, "One." Giving her time to think the matter over, a few more drops were sprinkled upon her head, the teacher exclaiming, "Two," and so on in this way till he had reached ten. This method of instruction went on for some time; but, though Polly came near being drowned in several of the lessons, she stubbornly refused to repeat the figures after her teacher. Arithmetic was not her forte, and the confectioner at length gave up in despair, very much I fancy to Miss Polly's relief.
A month or more went by, when one day, as the bird in her cage was hanging out of doors, it suddenly began to rain. "One," the delighted confectioner heard Polly say, as the big drops fell upon her head, then "two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten," in rapid succession. But to the Parrot's vexation the rain did not cease as it was wont to do when taking her lesson, and every additional drop increased her anger. Finally she could stand it no longer, and in her shrillest tones shouted: "Stop it, stop it! That's all I know, hang it, that's all I know!"
The confectioner says no amount of money can buy that bird.
The Crow, an eminent doctor in Russia says, can be taught, if you have the patience, to count up to ten, while a certain tribe of men in Polynesia, "higher" animals, you know, cannot be taught to count beyond five or six.
This same doctor had an intelligent Dog which was accustomed, like other Dogs, to bury his surplus bones in the garden. In order to test the mental powers of this animal the doctor one day gave him no less than twenty-six bones, every one of which he saw the Dog duly bury in separate places. The next day no food was given him at meal time, but he was commanded by his master to dig up the bones. This the intelligent fellow proceeded to do, but after uncovering ten came to a full stop. After whining and running about in great perplexity he finally succeeded in unearthing nine more. Still he seemed conscious that he had not found the full number and kept up the search till he had fetched to his master the other seven.