The power of putting this and that together is emphatically a reasoning faculty; in other words, it is the power of tracing the relation between cause and effect. The literature of natural history abounds in examples of the possession of this faculty by animals, and so does the experience of every one who has ever kept dogs or horses. Jet had it to an eminent degree. When she was about to bring forth a litter, she always tried to dig a cave for them under the steps of the front door. This, of course, was forbidden, but she was resolute, and many a time she had her cavern nearly finished before she was detected. The bell-wire passed under the steps, so that in the course of her digging she was very apt to ring the bell, and it was some time before the servants found out whence the mysterious ringing originated; but, when the secret was discovered, Jet was pulled out and punished. Punishment did not break her of the habit; indeed, she was an incorrigibly obstinate dog, and never was broken of any trick she once set her mind upon; but after that, whenever she heard the bell, she ran out of the hole and hid at the corner of the house until the coast was clear, when she would go back to work, taking more pains to avoid the wire. If her master was at home and suspected who rang the bell, he often answered the door himself, and looking toward the side of the house he was sure to see Jet peeping cautiously round the corner with such a mischievous and comical expression in her eyes that he rarely refrained from a hearty laugh; whereupon the dog would pluck up heart, and come forward, grinning and apologizing, as if to say, "I am very sorry I've given you so much trouble; I didn't know it was wrong, and I won't do so again." She was a dreadful liar, (for dogs can lie with their eyes and faces, as well as men can lie with their tongues.) but it was all very funny. Her understanding the use of a door-bell reminds us of a story told of an Italian greyhound at Bologna, which was accustomed every morning to visit a dog of its own species at a neighboring house. At first it used to wait in the street until the door was opened, but after a time it learned to use the knocker. Mr. Nassau Senior, in one of his articles in The Quarterly Review, gives an instance from his own knowledge of the way in which a terrier used to obtain admission to the common-room at Merton College, Oxford, whose sacred threshold, be it known, dogs are strictly forbidden to cross. "The animal's cunning," says Mr. Senior, "would have done honor to an Old Bailey attorney." We give the narrative in his own language: "It happened one evening that a couple of terriers had followed their masters to the door, and while they remained excluded, unhappily followed the habits rather of biped than of quadruped animals, and began to quarrel like a couple of Christians. The noise of the fight summoned their masters to separate them, and as it appeared that the hero of our tale had been much mauled by a superior adversary, the severe bienséances of the place were for once relaxed, and he was allowed to enjoy during the rest of the night the softness of a monastic rug and the blaze of a monastic fire, luxuries which every initiated dog and man will duly appreciate. The next day, soon after the common-room party had been assembled, the sounds of the preceding evening were renewed with tenfold violence. There was such snapping and tearing, and snarling and howling, as could be accounted for only by a general engagement:
'The noise alarmed the festive hall,
And started forth the fellows all.'
But, instead of a battle royal, they found at the door their former guest, in solitude sitting on his rump, and acting a furious dog-fight, in the hope of again gaining admittance among the quieti ordines deorum. We have heard that he was rewarded with both the grandes and the petites entrées; but this does not rest on the same authority as the rest of the narrative."
Mr. Watson's book abounds with other instances of intelligence in animals, which it is almost impossible to avoid attributing to the operation of reason. He gives an anecdote, for instance, of an elephant which, seeing an artillery-man fall from the tumbril of a gun, in such a situation that in a second or two the wheel of the gun carriage must have gone over him, instantly, without any warning from its keeper, lifted the wheel with its trunk and kept it suspended until the carriage had passed clear of the soldier. Here the elephant manifestly reasoned for himself. A still more remarkable manifestation of the reasoning faculty is recorded of an animal of the same species. An elephant in a menagerie was trained to pick up coins with his trunk. On one occasion a sixpence was thrown down which fell a little beyond his reach (he was chained) and near the wall. After several vain attempts to pick it up, he stood motionless a few seconds, evidently considering how to act; he then stretched his proboscis as far as he could in a straight line, a little distance above the coin, and blew with great force against the wall. The blast of air, rebounding from the wall, caught up the sixpence and drove it toward him, as he evidently intended it should. Another elephant was once seen to blow a potato which was just beyond his reach against the wall, and catch it when it rebounded. The ingenuity displayed in these cases is something akin to the use of tools which has been declared a characteristic of man alone. This, however, is a mistake. The club which the gorilla is known to wield with such terrible power, the palm-branches with which elephants brush away flies, the stones which monkeys and even birds have been seen to use either in breaking open shells or keeping them distended while they extracted the shell-fish—what are these but tools? Foxes have been seen to set cods' heads as baits for crows, and pounce upon the birds when they came to eat them. The ingenuity of rats in getting at toothsome morsels is well known; there are many instances of their using their tails to extract oil from narrow-necked bottles—all these cases being equivalent to the use of tools. A Newfoundland dog at Torquay, wanting water, took a pail from the kitchen and carried it to the pump, where he sat down until one of the men-servants came out, to whom he made such significant gestures that the man pumped the pail full for him. The most remarkable part of the story is that, when the dog had finished, he carried back the pail to the place in the kitchen from which he had taken it. That was something all the same as a tool which the eagle of St. Kilda, mentioned by Macgillivray, used when, attacking two boys who had robbed her nest, she dipped her pinions first in water and then in sand, to give greater force to the blows which she struck with them. A rat has been seen conducting a blind companion by means of a stick, each of the animals holding one end of it in his mouth. Cats have often been known to learn the use of a latch; and a terrier pup, only two months old, belonging to the writer of this article, has so good an idea of the purpose of the same article that he manifests a desire to get out of the room by ineffectual jumps at the door-handle. A London pastry-cook had a number of eggs stolen from a store room at the top of the house; a watch being set for the thief, two rats were detected carrying an egg downstairs. One of the rats, going down one step, would stand on his hind-legs with his fore paws resting on the stair above, while the other rolled the egg toward him; then, putting his fore-legs tightly round it, he lifted it down to the step on which he was standing, and held it there till the other came down to take charge of it. Rats have been known to convey eggs up-stairs by a somewhat similar process.
A very clear example of reasoning occurs in a story told of a water-hen, which, having observed a pheasant feed out of a box which opened when the bird stood on a rail in front of it, went and stood in the same place as soon as the pheasant quitted it. Finding that its weight was not sufficient to raise the lid of the box, it kept jumping on the rail to give additional impetus. This only succeeded partially; so the clever bird went away and fetched another of its own species, and the weight of the two had the desired effect. An anecdote is told by Mrs. Lee of a magpie which is almost enough to persuade one that the creature had the gift of language. The bird used to watch about a neighboring toll-gate at times when he expected the toll-keeper's wife to be making pastry; and, if he observed her so employed, he would perch upon the gate and shout, "Gate ahoy!" when, of course, if her husband were absent, she would run out to open it; the bird would then dart into the house and carry away a billful of her pie-crust, eating and chattering over it with the greatest glee. Surely no one will deny that in this case the bird exercised the faculty of reason.
Somewhat analogous to this case are the many stories related of animals apparently understanding what is said in their presence. In reality they probably have no conception of the meaning of the words uttered, but their keenness of observation enables them to detect slight changes in the tone of voice and notice little things which escape our coarser vision; and from trifling signs they draw reasonable conclusions. The writer had a cat which always knew when the servant was told to fetch food for her, though the experiment was often tried of giving the order in various tones of voice and without any look or sign that would be likely to attract pussy's attention. During our last war with England there was an old Newfoundland dog on board the British ship Leander, stationed at Halifax. He had been attached to the ship several years, and the sailors one and all believed that he understood what was said. He was lying on the deck one day when the captain in passing remarked: "I shall be sorry to do it, but I must have Neptune shot, he is getting so old and infirm." The dog immediately jumped overboard and swam to another ship, where being taken on board he remained till he died. Nothing could ever induce him to go near the Leander again, and if he happened to meet any of her boats or crew on shore, he made off as fast as he could.
Animals certainly have the power of communicating thoughts to each other, as the following story proves: "At Horton, in Buckinghamshire, (a village where Milton passed some of his early days,) about the year 1818, a gentleman from London took possession of a house, the former tenant of which had moved to a farm about half a mile off. The new inmate brought with him a large French poodle, to take the duty of watchman in the place of a fine Newfoundland dog which went away with his master; but a puppy of the same breed was left behind; and he was incessantly persecuted by the poodle. As the puppy grew up, the persecution still continued. At length he was one day missing for some hours; but he did not come back alone; he returned with his old friend, the large house-dog, to whom he had made a communication; and in an instant the two fell upon the unhappy poodle and killed him before he could be rescued from their fury. In this case the injuries of the young dog must have been made known to his friend, a plan of revenge concerted, and the determination formed to carry the plan into effect with equal promptitude." Count Tilesius, a Russian traveller, who wrote at the beginning of the present century, tells a wonderful anecdote of a dog of his which had been sadly worried by a larger and stronger animal. For some days it was observed that he saved half his food and laid it up as a private store. When he had accumulated a large supply, he went out and gathered around him several dogs of the neighborhood, whom he brought to his home and feasted on his hoard. The singular spectacle of a dog giving a supper-party attracted the count's attention, and he determined to watch their proceedings. As soon as the feast was over, they went out in a body, marched deliberately through the streets to the outskirts of the town, and there, under the leadership of their entertainer, fell upon a large dog and punished him severely. This incident not only shows that dogs can communicate their thoughts to one another, and can follow out a fixed plan of action, but it looks very much as if they had what is generally supposed to be peculiar to man—namely, some idea of a bargain. They can be magnanimous in their behavior toward their fellows, and the measures which large dogs occasionally adopt to get rid of the annoyance of little curs display a great deal of judgment and good feeling. In Mr. Youatt's book, On the Dog, we have a story of a Newfoundland dog in the city of Cork which had been greatly worried by a number of noisy curs. He took no notice of them until one carried his presumption so far as to bite him in the leg, whereupon the large animal ran after the offender, caught him by the back of the neck, and carried him to the quay. There, after holding him suspended over the edge for a few moments, he dropped him into the river. But he had no purpose to inflict more than a mild punishment, for after the cur had been well ducked and frightened and was beginning to struggle for his life, the Newfoundland dog plunged into the water and brought him safe to land. That animal certainly showed good sense, a good heart, and a lively appreciation of what was just and proper. A very comical example of a dog's feeling of propriety is quoted by Mr. Watson from Jesse's Gleanings in Natural History. "A gentleman going out shooting obtained the loan of a pointer from a friend, who told him that the dog would behave very well as long as he killed his birds: but that, if he frequently missed, it would leave him and run home. Unhappily the borrower was extremely unskilful. Bird after bird was put up and fired at, but flew off untouched, till the pointer grew careless. As if willing, however, to give his client one chance more, he made a dead stop at a fern bush, with big nose pointed downward, his forefoot bent, and his tail straight and steady. In this position he remained firm till the sportsman was close to him, with both barrels cocked; he then moved steadily forward for a few paces, and at last stood still near a bunch of heather, his tail expressing his anxiety by moving slowly backward and forward. At last out sprang a fine old black cock. Bang, bang, went both barrels, but the bird escaped unhurt. This was more than the dog could bear; he turned boldly round, placed his tail between his legs, gave one long, loud howl, and set off homeward as fast as he could."
Perhaps, after all, one of the most curious exhibitions of reason is afforded by the crows, which, in the northern parts of Scotland and in the Faroe Islands, hold extraordinary meetings every now and then, apparently for the purpose of judging and punishing evil-doers among their community. The sessions are sometimes prolonged two or three days; and as long as they last, flocks of crows continue to arrive in great numbers from all quarters of the heavens. In the mean while, some of the assembly are active and noisy; others sit with drooping heads as grave as judges. When the gathering is complete, a very general noise ensues—we are tempted to call it talking—and then the whole body fall upon one or two individuals and put them to death. Justice thus vindicated, the convention straightway disperses. Now, the crows show every appearance of having been summoned to these councils; indeed, it is almost inconceivable that they should meet by chance; but how the summons is given; how they know when all have arrived; what are the offences they punish; whether the criminals know the fate that awaits them, and are restrained by force from making their escape; and how the knowledge of the crime is dispersed amongst the whole assembly—these are curious questions to which we fear no satisfactory answer will ever be given. The idea of hundreds of birds sitting in deliberation, like a court of justice, is indeed marvellous. We can only say that the narrative, as we have given it, seems to be well authenticated, and we leave our readers to draw their own conclusions.
We think we have quoted anecdotes enough to prove that brutes have souls and reason; or, if they have not, that they are much more wonderfully made than man, since they can perform without assistance from the reasoning faculty actions which in us require the exercise of the highest intelligence. And although we do not go to the length of saying, with the Rabbi Manasseh of old, and Dr. John Brown, the author of Spare Hours, in our own day, that there is a next world for the brute creation; and do not believe with another modern writer (the Rev. J. G. Wood) that divine justice absolutely requires that God should make amends to animals in the future life for the sufferings they endure in this—perhaps our readers will agree with us that we have shown it to be no ways impossible that God may have designed the souls of dumb beasts to outlast in this world their perishable bodies; that the intelligent part of the sagacious dog may animate a long succession of Rabs and Pontos; and the spirit of the dead pet may return into bodily form to delight new generations of masters.