CHAPTER XXXI.

MORE ABOUT THE THINKING OF ANIMALS.

[Sidenote: Stories about the shepherd’s dog.]

As animals think, they learn. Some learn more than others. The dog learns a good deal; so do the monkey and the elephant. Some are good at learning some particular things. The parrot learns to mimic talking, though it is quite stupid about some other things. The mocking-bird learns to imitate a great many different sounds. The shepherd’s dog, seen here, though he does not know as much about most things as dogs of some other kinds, understands particularly well how to take care of sheep. If he is trained to this business, he will show great skill in doing it. James Hogg, a Scotch poet, commonly called the Ettrick Shepherd, relates many wonderful anecdotes of his dog, whom he called Sirrah. He says that one night a large flock of lambs got out from their fold and ran away among the hills. When the shepherd said, “Sirrah, they’re a’ awa’!” the dog dashed off after them, and was soon out of sight. The shepherd also, and his man, started off in pursuit. They searched all night, but could find nothing of the dog or the lambs; but in the morning they espied Sirrah standing guard at the mouth of a gorge, or narrow pass, and anxiously looking for his master to come. He had succeeded in finding all the scattered lambs, and here they were in this gorge, into which he had driven them. It is told of another dog of this kind that he would pick out any stray sheep from the midst of a whole flock, and drive it back to the flock to which it belonged. This dog was once observed trying to drive a flock over a bridge which they were afraid to cross. He managed very well, and at length succeeded in getting them over. It was amusing to see how he did it. At one moment he was driving up some of the scattered ones, and the next he was among the foremost, urging them forward. After a while he made some of the foremost pass over, and then the whole flock followed.

[Sidenote: Animals build always the same way, and have no new fashions.]

Though animals think and learn, they do not have much originality. They always do things very much in the same way. They do not keep contriving some new ways of doing things as men do. Each kind of bird has its own way of building a nest, and it is always the same way. The robins build their nests now just as they did hundreds of years ago. The moles build their tunneled habitations under ground year after year after the plan that you see on page 112. And so of other animals. They have no new fashions, and learn none from each other. But men, you know, are always contriving new ways of building houses, or learning them from other men.

[Sidenote: What is done by instinct.]

Many of the things that animals know how to do they seem to know either without learning, or without learning in the same way that we learn. They are said to do such things by instinct; but what instinct really is no one can tell. It is by this instinct that birds build their nests, and bees their honeycombs, and beavers their dams and huts. If these things were all contrived and thought out just as men contrive houses, there would be some changes in the fashions of them, and some improvements. Nearly all that we know about this instinct is that some very nice things are done by it, without much thinking being mixed up with it.

[Sidenote: Hens hatching duck’s eggs and sitting on pieces of chalk.]

This want of thinking sometimes leads to some queer mistakes. If you put a duck’s eggs in a hen’s nest, she will sit on them as if they were her own eggs, and after the ducks are hatched she will take care of them, not seeming to know that, they are not chickens. One would suppose that she would know, because they look so different from chickens, and have bills so unlike theirs. But she does not seem to think of this. And it is amusing to see her after the ducks get large enough to go into the water. Off they run, and plunge in, and swim about, while the old hen stands by the water, greatly alarmed lest they should be drowned. She does not understand it; she does not know that ducklings have an instinct different from chickens.

So, too, if the hen has rounded pieces of chalk put in her nest, she will sit on them as if they were real eggs. Her instinct makes her sit; but if she had much reason she would not sit on pieces of chalk. If she thought much, she would find out what they were and quit her nest.

[Sidenote: The building instinct of the beaver.]

I have mentioned the building instinct of the beavers. An English gentleman caught a young one and put him at first in a cage. After a while he let him out in a room where there was a great variety of things. As soon as he was let out he began to exercise his building instinct. He gathered together whatever he could find, brushes, baskets, boots, clothes, sticks, bits of coal, etc., and arranged them as if to build a dam. Now, if he had his wits about him, as we should say, he would have thought that there was no use in building a dam where there is no water. It is from such mistakes as these that I have mentioned that the instinct of animals is said to be blind.

It is plain that, while animals learn about things by their senses as we do, they do not think nearly as much about what they learn, and this is one reason that they do not know as much as we do. Even the wisest of them, as the elephant and the dog, do not think over what they see and hear very much.

[Sidenote: How the minds of animals differ from ours.]

But this is not all. There are some things that we understand about which animals know nothing. They know nothing about what happened before they were born, or what happens now in their lifetime away from them in other places. They know nothing about what is to happen. They know nothing about God and another world. You can not teach them any thing about any such subjects. The reason is, that while their minds are like ours in some things, they are different in other things.

You can see this great difference between your minds and the minds of animals in one thing. You never would think of telling a story to a dog or a cat as you would to a child, for you know that it would not be understood.

The minds of animals are so much unlike ours that they do not know the difference between right and wrong. Some suppose that a dog will not do certain things because he knows that it is wrong to do them. But this is not so. He is afraid to do what he would be whipped for. If he sees a piece of meat on a table, he will not take it simply because he knows his master would not like it, and not because he knows that it is wrong to steal.

[Sidenote: What some wise men are foolish and wicked enough to say.]

I have told you that the mind uses the brain in thinking. Now some learned men have been so foolish as to say that it is the brain itself that does the thinking, just as if our brains, and the brains of all animals, are only so many machines that make thoughts and feelings. Of course, such men do not believe that, after death, the mind or soul of man leaves the body and lives separate from it. They believe that when the body dies there is an end to every thing. But God has told us differently from this in his word, and he knows all about such things; and those that pretend to know that it is not as God says it is, show great wickedness as well as folly.

_Questions._--What is said about the learning of animals? Tell about the shepherd’s dog. What is said about the contrivance of animals? Why do they have no new fashions? What is said about instinct? Tell about the hen’s hatching duck’s eggs. Tell about her sitting on pieces of chalk. What is told about the beaver? What is one reason that animals do not know as much as we do? What things do they know nothing about? Do they know the difference between right and wrong? What is said about the notions of some learned men?