of animal intelligence that would otherwise escape notice. Contrasting current newspapers as repertories of reference with volumes of anecdotes of animal instinct, I have found the former to be more valuable and trustworthy, inasmuch as inter alia newspapers usually refer to passing events, the records of which admit of investigation, and the authenticity of which records can at once be established or the reverse. I have had frequent occasion to enquire into the truthfulness or accuracy of newspaper paragraphs-of the reports of local 'correspondents'-relating to singular instances of animal intelligence; and the result has usually been that, while I have found the same incident sometimes differently described in half a dozen different newspapers, all the essential facts have been given accurately, or the dates and names furnished enabled me to discover the actual and important facts for myself.

Much attention is now being given to the subject of animal intelligence in all classes of our serials, whose number, scientific and literary, is simply legion. The articles which illustrate or discuss the subject in question are not always anonymous. For instance, in Nature,' as in 'Science Gossip,' the name of the author is frequently or usually appended, so that the value of his statements or opinions may be judged of by the admitted or doubtful competency of the observer or narrator. But even where the articles are anonymous, as in 'Land and Water' or the 'Field,' in the various London or other quarterlies or monthlies, it is usually possible, sometimes easy, to discover the author's name, and to gauge the veracity and value of his assertions; and we have the additional guarantee, in many if not most of these serials, that the editors may be trusted to admit no contributions from authors who are not competent to deal with the subjects they respectively discuss.

A common and instructive feature nowadays of all classes of serials, including newspapers, is their practice of reviewing works of natural history, zoology, and travel by competent critics, whose comments are frequently as valuable as the quoted observations of the authors criticised. The modern practice of publishing volumes of reprints of articles that

have originally appeared anonymously as contributions to the serial press gives us occasional opportunity of discovering the names, and consequent competency, of the said anonymous writers as observers and recorders of facts in natural history. But even when the author of anecdotes of animal feeling and sagacity gives his name to the public as a voucher for their authenticity, fact may be clothed in such a garb that it has all the semblance of beautiful fiction, and as such an imaginative public prefers to regard and accept it. I very well remember, when in Edinburgh some years ago, and in conversation on the subject of animal reason with a lady of much shrewdness both in observation and inference, a relative of my own, who had, like so many of her countrywomen, been much moved by Dr. John Brown's well-known story of 'Rab and his Friends,' that she cast a doubt on its truthfulness, regarding it as a 'story,' and a mere story, and thinking all the more highly of it on that account. I had myself no reason to doubt that the story was fact, or founded on fact. But calling on the author himself, and discussing the subject of the apparent incredibility of real enough occurrences illustrative of animal intelligence, I took the opportunity of putting the question to him personally and directly whether or not 'Rab' was a fact, and behaved as he is said to have done. The answer was what I had expected-that it was all 'perfectly true.'

And this leads me on to remark that the student of anecdotes of animal sagacity will constantly find that

Truth is strange

Stranger than fiction;

that incidents which appear simply incredible, and which are relegated to the category of fable or romance, on investigation prove to be, like Dr. John Brown's 'Rab,' 'perfectly true.' A distinguished author, well known as a canophilist, told me some years ago that he dared not publish certain anecdotes or incidents illustrating the remarkable intelligence of dogs and birds under exceptional circumstances, though he believed them to be 'perfectly true,' just because they would not be believed by the public. They would have

been regarded either as pure fictions or as gross exaggerations of the truth; and in either case his position-his reputation as the describer of other incidents that were only equally true, but for which he could better vouch from direct personal knowledge, would have been weakened or imperilled.

The category of the apparently incredible in anecdote is well illustrated by what used to be called 'travellers' tales.' The suspected veracity of such tales, and of those who made them public, is notorious. But it has been proved by modern travellers over and over again that stories long regarded as fabulous are, or have been, simple facts-for instance, those of Bruce as regards Abyssinia, of Du Chaillu as regards Western Tropical Africa, of Livingstone as to Central Tropical Africa, and of Humboldt and Waterton as to South Tropical America. The history of the gorilla affords a striking instance of the confirmation of old travellers' stories by the researches of modern missionaries-for instance, those of Dr. Savage, the American missionary, in 1847. Purchas, in 1613, on the authority of an Englishman-Andrew Battel, who had lived for some years in Congo-described what he called' pongoes,' asserting inter alia that they build shelters for the raine. . . . and cover the dead with great heaps of boughs and wood. . . . One of these pongoes took a negro boy of his, which lived a month with them.' In point of fact, the evidence of modern traveller-naturalists is of the most important kind. I allude to such men as Humboldt, Agassiz, Darwin, Wallace, Houzeau, Bates, Belt, Hooker, Audubon, Wilson, Gould, Gillmore, and a host of others, who, with competent natural history knowledge and the desirable natural history tastes, had the inestimable advantage of foreign travel-more or less extensive-and who have made the best use of their opportunities of observation by placing on record all that they saw noteworthy in animal habits.

Nor are we to regard 'old stories' as fabulous simply because of their age. Though I have, for the reasons already specified, preferred modern to ancient anecdotes or illustrations of animal intelligence as the basis of my own.

generalisations, it is only just to the naturalists of classical times of ancient Greece and Rome, for example-to point out that one of the results of modern research has been to prove the correctness of observers and recorders who lived centuries before accurate observation or philosophical inference is supposed to have existed or to have been developed in the progress of Western civilisation. In certain cases the observations of Aristotle, Herodotus, and Pliny have been laughed and sneered at as incorrect, fanciful, poetical, or mythical, by successive generations of more modern naturalists among the scientific and 'advanced' nations of the West.

Nevertheless, the most recent researches sometimes prove the accuracy of the distinguished Pagan, and the inaccuracy of the less distinguished Christian, naturalists. One of the most remarkable instances of this confirmation of the soundness of the observation and inference of ancient naturalists is the corroboration by the late Mr. Moggridge, at Mentone, in the South of France, of the observations made on harvesting ants by Aristotle hundreds of years ago. Mr. Lee's observations at the Brighton Aquarium on the reproduction of the octopus also confirm those of the noble Greek naturalist and philosopher Aristotle. Countenance at least is given to the well-known ancient fable of Romulus and Remus by the discovery in India, in recent times, of so-called 'wolf children,' who, whether or not they have been suckled or protected by wolves, have many of the habits of those or other wild animals, as is fully pointed out in another chapter.' Much ridicule, again, has been expended upon the assertion -repeatedly made, and by generations of naturalists-as to the 'milking' of Aphides and other insects by ants. That it is nevertheless a fact, that certain bees do the same, and that Aphides are by no means the only insects treated as milk kine, has been shown in the pages of Nature' quite recently by observers so competent as Fritz Müller and Meldola.

On the other hand, there are many stories in modern

That which treats of the degeneracy or defective development of the human mind.

fiction that are types or representations of real incidents or character-are borrowed or transferred from actual life—are taken or copied from nature. Exact representations of the finer as well as the coarser traits in animal character, particularly as relates to the dog and horse, occur abundantly in the works both of novelists and poets-including, for instance, those of Sir Walter Scott, Burns, Byron, Cowper, Bulwer (Lord Lytton), and George Eliot. Such anecdotes, however, are apt to be looked upon not as genuine illustrations of animal character, feeling, or intelligence just because they do occur in poetry or fiction. Nor is it easy, in such cases, to distinguish the fiction from the fact; the more so because of the inexact or erroneous representations of animal mind given by other poets and novelists, including Shakespeare and Rogers. In this category-of writers who are too imaginative to be depended upon, who are untrustworthy as to their facts, who are figurative, fanciful, and sensational, rather than accurate, in their descriptions of animal habitsmust be included certain French and other so-called ' popularisers' of science, such as Michelet and Figuier.

But the difficulty of discriminating between fact and fiction-of accepting facts as such, because to the ignorant they appear to be improbabilities-is daily being illustrated in many other ways. For instance, there are many worthy people-living at a distance from the scene of the incident, in whose case distance obviously lends enchantment or romance to their view of a perfectly prosaic subject—who believe the whole of the well-known story of Greyfriars Bobby' to be fiction, and who ascribe the dog's memorial collar, monument, and other civic or private honours to the tendency of imaginative men and women to idolise their ideals of animal virtue. They regard the old dog of the Greyfriars churchyard, Edinburgh-long so familiar to the dwellers in the precincts-as a mere myth, the poetical embodiment, however, of the human ideal of canine fidelity and affection. On the other hand, people living in Edinburgh itself, and having confidence in the observers and recorders. of the facts of Greyfriars Bobby's life, are convinced of the former existence of the animal, and of the truthfulness of