Animal Intelligence

Abstract

As many of the readers of NATURE have probably not seen my article on the above subject in the current number of the Nineteenth Century, I feel it desirable to repeat in these columns the request with which that article concludes. This request is merely that those who read it should favour me by sending to the under-mentioned address brief accounts of any well-marked instances of the display of animal intelligence which may have fallen within their own notice or that of their friends. None of these instances will be published by me without permission; but I desire to accumulate as many of such instances as possible—no matter of how dubious a character—in order that I may obtain a wide basis of suggestion as to the directions in which experiments may be most profitably employed. I may add that as the effect of publishing this invitation in the Nineteenth Century has been that of burying my desks in a snow-storm of letters, I should like to take this opportunity of explaining to past and future correspondents that I do not esteem their kindness the less because its bounty is too great for me to acknowledge in individual cases.