Abstract
THE correspondence in these columns, called forth by the letters of Mr. Darwin and Dr. Huggins (NATURE, Feb. 13), may be counted among the many indications of the growing interest in psychology; while at the same time it furnishes evidence of how far our knowledge of mind is behind most of the other sciences. Of the important points in the valuable letters of Mr. Darwin and Dr. Huggins we shall speak presently. But let us remark first on the minor and distinct question raised by Mr. Wallace. Ke says: “The power many animals possess to find their way back over a road they have travelled blindfolded (shut up in a basket inside a coach, for example), has generally been considered to be an undoubted case of true instinct. But it seems to me that an animal so circumstanced will have its attention necessarily active, owing to its desire to get out of its confinement, and that by means of its most acute, and only available sense, it will take note of the successive odours of the way, which will leave on its mind a series of images as distinct and prominent as those we should receive by the sense of sight. The recurrence of these odours in their proper inverse order—every house, ditch, field, and village having its own well-marked individuality—would make it an easy matter for the animal in question to follow the identical route back, however many turnings and cross-roads it may have followed.” The objections to this hypothesis, to which Prof. Robertson has given his adhesion, are very serious. Let the scent of the dog be ever so acute, it is in many ways ill suited for supplying the kind of guidance required. A hound on the track of a hare has to follow a stream of the same scent. The association here is between the hare and the smell of the hare. Are not the associations of smell all of this kind? Is there any evidence that either in man or beast one smell ever coheres to another so as to render possible a memory of odours apart from the objects that give them forth? We are not very certain about the facts which the theory is put forward to explain; they are, however, better authenticated than is the fundamental assumption involved in the explanation. But, for the sake of argument, let us grant that a dog shut up in a basket can, as the result of a simple experience, link together several thousand smells in an unbroken series; say, the stink of a dung-hill is associated with the odour of sweet hay, this with the scent of a flock of sheep passed on the road, this again with the smell of a railway station to the right, and so on during a journey of sixty or seventy miles. If it be solely by the aid of this memory of smells that the dog is to return to the place whence it was taken, it must needs make haste back. It will be too late if the sheep have changed their position on the road. Especially is it necessary that it should get home while the wind still continues to blow in the same direction, otherwise its landmarks will be all in confusion. One other difficulty: suppose the dog to have got into the fragrance of the hay-field, which is perhaps forty acres in extent, how is it to find the dung-hill at the north-west corner? particularly if the wind be blowing the wrong way. Is it to scour round the ill-defined outskirts of the perfume until it comes on the ill smell of the dung-hill? If we try to conceive in terms of vision (we can make nothing of it from our experiences of smell) such a memory of smells as the dog is supposed capable of acquiring, we must represent to ourselves the sensations of being carried through a series of differently coloured mists, which, while they prevent us from seeing objects, blend and shade into one another. In such a case, though we might remember that the red came after the yellow, how, having got into the red, should we know in what direction the yellow might be found? These are among the difficulties that have not, it appears to us, been sufficiently considered by Mr. Wallace and Prof. Robertson.
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Perception and Instinct in the Lower Animals . Nature 7, 377–378 (1873). https://doi.org/10.1038/007377a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/007377a0