But creatures to which the gift of intellect is not granted, in which innate ideas cannot arise, still evince the faculty of memory. It is, therefore, possible that fish and insects, possessing memory, dream. Of course the doctrines of Pythagoras, and Simonides, and the story of the interpretation of the language of birds by the vizier of Sultan Mahmoud, are mere fables, and the cackling of the Roman geese was accidental; yet the bird does possess the memory of language, and the power of imparting ideas.
Nightingales’ notes (as Bechstein has beautifully recorded them) seem to me like the Mexican language, and to express variety of sentiments of adoration and love. The parrot, magpie, jackdaw, jay, starling, and bullfinch, are prattlers; and the exquisite little canary, the pupil of my friend, Mrs. H——, the pet, indeed, not only of its mistress, but of statesmen and learned physiologists, warbled its words in purest melody. From Sir William Temple we learn the faculty of the wonderful parrot of Prince Maurice, of Nassau, at the Hague, that responsed almost rationally to promiscuous questions. Granting, then, this faculty of memory, it is clear the bird may dream, and I may add one other quotation from the “Domestic Habits of Birds,” in proof of this.
“We have, however, heard some of these night-songs which were manifestly uttered while the bird was asleep, in the same way as we sometimes talk during sleep—a circumstance remarked by Dryden, who says,
“ ‘The little birds in dreams their songs repeat.’
“We have even observed this in a wild bird. On the night of the 6th April, 1811, about ten o’clock, a dunncock (accentor modularis) was heard in a garden to go through its usual song more than a dozen times very faintly, but distinctly enough for the species to be recognised.” The night was cold and frosty, but might it not be that the little musician was dreaming of summer and sunshine? Aristotle, indeed, proposes the question whether animals hatched from eggs ever dream. Marcgrave, in reply, expressly says, that his “parrot, Laura, often rose in the night, and prattled while half asleep.”
Among quadrupeds, it is probable that those which, by their half-reasoning instinct, approach nearest to the power of comparison, and those which, in contrast to the callous-hoofed, possess an acuteness of feeling, and therefore the nearest approximate intelligence, are the most prone to dream.
Although we know nothing of the dreams of that very learned dog, which Leibnitz assures us he saw, and which uttered an articulate language, and often enjoyed a chat with his master; yet, of the slumbering visions of the canines I have many illustrations. Vic, a fat terrier, was a somniloquist. She would bark, and laugh, and run round the room, or against tables; the surest proof of somnambulism. Indeed dogs are celebrated by many poets for their dreaming propensities. Ennius writes —
“Et canis in somnis leporis vestigia latrat.”
And Lucretius has left us a very comprehensive poetical account of the dreams of brutes.
Even Chaucer refers to these dreams; and in the Hall of Branksome,