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The Sporting Jellyfish
It is of interest to consider a common animal like the jellyfish Aurelia. It is admirably suited for a leisurely life in the open sea, where it swims about by contracting its saucer-shaped body, thus driving water out from its concavity. By means of millions of stinging cells on its four frilled lips and on its marginal tentacles it is able to paralyse and lasso minute crustaceans and the like, which it then wafts into its mouth. It has a very eventful life-history, for it has in its early youth to pass through a fixed stage, fastened to rock or seaweed, but it is a successful animal, well suited for its habitat, and practically cosmopolitan in its distribution. It is certainly an old-established creature. Yet it is very variable in colour and in size, and even in internal structure. Very often it is the size of a saucer or a soup-plate, but giants over two feet in diameter are well known. Much more important, however, than variation in colour and size are the inborn changes in structure. Normally a jellyfish has its parts in four or multiples of four. Thus it has four frilled lips, four tufts of digestive filaments in its stomach, and four brightly coloured reproductive organs. It has eight sense-organs round the margin of its disc, eight branched and eight unbranched radial canals running from the central stomach to a canal round the circumference. The point of giving these details is just this, that every now and then we find a jellyfish with its parts in sixes, fives, or threes, and with a multitude of minor idiosyncrasies. Even in the well-established jellyfish there is a fountain of change.
Sec. 1
Evolution of Plants
It is instructive to look at the various kinds of cabbages, such as cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, kale and curly greens, and remember that they are all scions of the not very promising wild cabbage found on our shores. And are not all the aristocrat apple-trees of our orchards descended from the plebeian crab-apple of the roadside? We know far too little about the precise origin of our cultivated plants, but there is no doubt that after man got a hold of them he took advantage of their variability to establish race after race, say, of rose and chrysanthemum, of potato and cereal. The evolution of cultivated plants is continuing before our eyes, and the creations of Mr. Luther Burbank, such as the stoneless plum and the primus berry, the spineless cactus and the Shasta daisy, are merely striking instances of what is always going on.
There is reason to believe that the domestic dog has risen three times, from three distinct ancestors—a wolf, a jackal, and a coyote. So a multiple pedigree must be allowed for in the case of the dog, and the same is true in regard to some other domesticated animals. But the big fact is the great variety of breeds that man has been able to fix, after he once got started with a domesticated type. There are over 200 well-marked breeds of domestic pigeons, and there is very strong evidence that all are descended from the wild rock-dove, just as the numerous kinds of poultry are descended from the jungle-fowl of some parts of India and the Malay Islands. Even more familiar is the way in which man has, so to speak, unpacked the complex fur of the wild rabbit, and established all the numerous colour-varieties which we see among domestic rabbits. And apart from colour-varieties there are long-haired Angoras and quaint lop-eared forms, and many more besides. All this points to evolution going on.
The Romance of the Wheat
It is well-known that Neolithic man grew wheat, and some authorities have put the date of the first wheat harvest at between fifteen thousand and ten thousand years ago. The ancient civilisations of Babylonia, Egypt, Crete, Greece, and Rome were largely based on wheat, and it is highly probable that the first great wheatfields were in the fertile land between the Tigris and the Euphrates. The oldest Egyptian tombs that contain wheat, which, by the way, never germinates after its millennia of rest, belong to the First Dynasty, and are about six thousand years old. But there must have been a long history of wheat before that.
Now it is a very interesting fact that the almost certain ancestor of the cultivated wheat is at present living on the arid and rocky slopes of Mount Hermon. It is called Triticum hermonis, and it is varying notably to-day, as it did long ago when it gave rise to the emmer, which was cultivated in the Neolithic Age and is the ancestor of all our ordinary wheats. We must think of Neolithic man noticing the big seeds of this Hermon grass, gathering some of the heads, breaking the brittle spikelet-bearing axis in his fingers, knocking off the rough awns or bruising the spikelets in his hand till the glumes or chaff separated off and could be blown away, chewing a mouthful of the seeds—and resolving to sow and sow again.
That was the beginning of a long story, in the course of which man took advantage of the numerous variations that cropped up in this sporting stock and established one successful race after another on his fields. Virgil refers in the "Georgics" to the gathering of the largest and fullest ears of wheat in order to get good seed for another sowing, but it was not till the first quarter of the nineteenth century that the great step was taken, by men like Patrick Sheriff of Haddington, of deliberately selecting individual ears of great excellence and segregating their progeny from mingling with mediocre stock. This is the method which has been followed with remarkable success in modern times.
One of the factors that assisted the Allies in overcoming the food crisis in the darkest period of the war was the virtue of Marquis Wheat, a very prolific, early ripening, hard red spring wheat with excellent milling and baking qualities. It is now the dominant spring wheat in Canada and the United States, and it has enormously increased the real wealth of the world in the last ten years (1921). Now our point is simply that this Marquis Wheat is a fine example of evolution going on. In 1917 upwards of 250,000,000 bushels of this wheat were raised in North America, and in 1918 upwards of 300,000,000 bushels; yet the whole originated from a single grain planted in an experimental plot at Ottawa by Dr. Charles E. Saunders so recently as the spring of 1903.
We must not dwell too long on this particular instance of evolution, though it has meant much to our race. We wish, however, following Professor Buller's Essays on Wheat (1919), to explain the method by which this good seed was discovered. From one we may learn all. The parent of Marquis Wheat on the male side was the mid-Europe Red Fife—a first-class cereal. The parent on the female side was less promising, a rather nondescript, not pure-bred wheat, called Red Calcutta, which was imported from India into Canada about thirty years ago. The father was part of a cargo that came from the Baltic to Glasgow, and was happily included in a sample sent on to David Fife in Ontario about 1842. From one kernel of this sample David Fife started his stock of Red Fife, which was crossed by Dr. Saunders with Hard Red Calcutta. The result of the cross was a medley of types, nearly a hundred varieties altogether, and it was in scrutinising these that Dr. Saunders hit upon Marquis. He worked steadily through the material, studying head after head of what resulted from sowing, and selecting out those that gave most promise. Each of the heads selected was propagated; most of the results were rejected; the elect were sifted again and yet again, and finally Marquis Wheat emerged, rich in constructive possibilities, probably the most valuable food-plant in the world. It is like a romance to read that "the first crop of the wheat that was destined within a dozen years to overtax the mightiest elevators in the land was stored away in the winter of 1904-5 in a paper packet no larger than an envelope."
Thus from the Wild Wheat of Mount Hermon there evolved one of the most important food-plants of the world. This surely is Evolution going on.
Sec. 2
Changes in the Animal Life of a Country
Nothing gives us a more convincing impression of evolution in being than a succession of pictures of the animal life of a country in different ages. Dr. James Ritchie, a naturalist of distinction, has written a masterly book, The Influence of Man on Animal Life in Scotland (1920), in which we get this succession of pictures. "Within itself," he says, "a fauna is in a constant state of uneasy restlessness, an assemblage of creatures which in its parts ebbs and flows as one local influence or another plays upon it." There are temporary and local changes, endless disturbances and readjustments of the "balance of nature." One year there is a plague of field-voles, perhaps next year "grouse disease" is rife; in one place there is huge increase of starlings, in another place of rabbits; here cockchafers are in the ascendant, and there the moles are spoiling the pasture. "But while the parts fluctuate, the fauna as a whole follows a path of its own. As well as internal tides which swing to and fro about an average level, there is a drift which carries the fauna bodily along an 'irretraceable course.'" This is partly due to considerable changes of climate, for climate calls the tune to which living creatures dance, but it is also due to new departures among the animals themselves. We need not go back to the extinct animals and lost faunas of past ages—for Britain has plenty of relics of these—which "illustrate the reality of the faunal drift," but it may be very useful, in illustration of evolution in being, to notice what has happened in Scotland since the end of the Great Ice Age.
Some nine thousand years ago or more, certain long-headed, square-jawed, short-limbed, but agile hunters and fishermen, whom we call Neolithic Man, established themselves in Scotland. What was the state of the country then?
It was a country of swamps, low forests of birch, alder, and willow, fertile meadows, and snow-capped mountains. Its estuaries penetrated further inland than they now do, and the sea stood at the level of the Fifty-Foot Beach. On its plains and in its forests roamed many creatures which are strange to the fauna of to-day—the Elk and the Reindeer, Wild Cattle, the Wild Boar and perhaps Wild Horses, a fauna of large animals which paid toll to the European Lynx, the Brown Bear and the Wolf. In all likelihood, the marshes resounded to the boom of the Bittern and the plains to the breeding calls of the Crane and the Great Bustard.
Such is Dr. Ritchie's initial picture.
Now what happened in this kingdom of Caledonia which Neolithic Man had found? He began to introduce domesticated animals, and that meant a thinning of the ranks of predacious creatures. "Safety first" was the dangerous motto in obedience to which man exterminated the lynx, the brown bear, and the wolf. Other creatures, such as the great auk, were destroyed for food, and others like the marten for their furs. Small pests were destroyed to protect the beginnings of agriculture; larger animals like the boar were hunted out of existence; others, like the pearl-bearing river-mussels, yielded to subtler demands. No doubt there was protection also—protection for sport, for utility, for aesthetic reasons, and because of humane sentiments; even wholesome superstitions have safeguarded the robin redbreast and the wren. There were introductions too—the rabbit for utility, the pheasant for sport, and the peacock for amenity. And every introduction, every protection, every killing out had its far-reaching influences.
But if we are to picture the evolution going on, we must think also of man's indirect interference with animal life. He destroyed the forests, he cultivated the wild, he made bridges, he allowed aliens, like rats and cockroaches, to get in unawares. Of course, he often did good, as when he drained swamps and got rid of the mosquitoes which once made malaria rife in Scotland.
What has been the net result? Not, as one might think for a moment, a reduction in the number of different kinds of animals. Fourteen or so species of birds and beasts have been banished from Scotland since man interfered, but as far as numbers go they have been more than replaced by deliberate introductions like fallow deer, rabbit, squirrel, and pheasant, and by accidental introductions like rats and cockroaches. But the change is rather in quality than in quantity; the smaller have taken the place of the larger, rather paltry pigmies of noble giants. Thus we get a vivid idea that evolution, especially when man interferes, is not necessarily progressive. That depends on the nature of the sieves with which the living materials are sifted. As Dr. Ritchie well says, the standard of the wild fauna as regards size has fallen and is falling, and it is not in size only that there is loss, there is a deterioration of quality. "For how can the increase of Rabbits and Sparrows and Earthworms and Caterpillars, and the addition of millions of Rats and Cochroaches and Crickets and Bugs, ever take the place of those fine creatures round the memories of which the glamour of Scotland's past still plays—the Reindeer and the Elk, the Wolf, the Brown Bear, the Lynx, and the Beaver, the Bustard, the Crane, the Bumbling Bittern, and many another, lost or disappearing." Thus we see again that evolution is going on.
Sec. 3
The Adventurers
All through the millions of years during which animals have tenanted the earth and the waters under the earth, there has been a search for new kingdoms to conquer, for new corners in which to make a home. And this still goes on. It has been and is one of the methods of evolution to fill every niche of opportunity. There is a spider that lives inside a pitcher-plant, catching some of the inquisitive insects which slip down the treacherous internal surface of the trap. There is another that makes its home in crevices among the rocks on the shore of the Mediterranean, or even in empty tubular shells, keeping the water out, more or less successfully, by spinning threads of silk across the entrance to its retreat. The beautiful brine-shrimp, Artemia salina, that used to occur in British salterns has found a home in the dense waters of the Great Salt Lake of Utah. Several kinds of earthworms have been found up trees, and there is a fish, Arges, that climbs on the stones of steep mountain torrents of the Andes. The intrepid explorers of the Scotia voyage found quite a number of Arctic terns spending our winter within the summer of the Antarctic Circle—which means girdling the globe from pole to pole; and every now and then there are incursions of rare birds, like Pallas's Sand-grouse, into Britain, just as if they were prospecting in search of a promised land. Twice or thrice the distinctively North American Killdeer Plover has been found in Britain, having somehow or other got across the Atlantic. We miss part of the meaning of evolution if we do not catch this note of insurgence and adventure, which some animal or other never ceases to sound, though many establish themselves in a security not easily disturbed, and though a small minority give up the struggle against the stream and are content to acquiesce, as parasites or rottenness eaters, in a drifting life of ease.
More important than very peculiar cases is the broad fact that over and over again in different groups of animals there have been attempts to master different kinds of haunts—such as the underground world, the trees, the freshwaters, and the air. There are burrowing amphibians, burrowing reptiles, burrowing birds, and burrowing mammals; there are tree-toads, tree-snakes, tree-lizards, tree-kangaroos, tree-sloths, tree-shrews, tree-mice, tree-porcupines, and so on; enough of a list to show, without mentioning birds, how many different kinds of animals have entered upon an arboreal apprenticeship—an apprenticeship often with far-reaching consequences. What the freeing of the hand from being an organ of terrestrial support has meant in the evolution of monkeys is a question that gives a spur to our imagination.
The Case of the Robber Crab
On some of the coral islands of the Indian and Pacific Oceans there lives a land-crab, Birgus, which has learned to breathe on land. It breathes dry air by means of curious blood-containing tufts in the upper part of its gill-cavity, and it has also rudimentary gills. It is often about a foot long, and it has very heavy great claws, especially on the left-hand side. With this great claw it hammers on the "eye-hole" of a coconut, from which it has torn off the fibrous husk. It hammers until a hole is made by which it can get at the pulp. Part of the shell is sometimes used as a protection for the soft abdomen—for the robber-crab, as it is called, is an offshoot from the hermit-crab stock. Every year this quaint explorer, which may go far up the hills and climb the coco-palms, has to go back to the sea to spawn. The young ones are hatched in the same state as in our common shore-crab. That is to say, they are free-swimming larvae which pass through an open-water period before they settle down on the shore, and eventually creep up on to dry land. Just as open-water turtles lay their eggs on sandy shores, going back to their old terrestrial haunt, so the robber-crab, which has almost conquered the dry land, has to return to the seashore to breed. There is a peculiar interest in the association of the robber-crab with the coco-palm, for that tree is not a native of these coral islands, but has been introduced, perhaps from Mexico, by the Polynesian mariners before the discovery of America by Columbus. So the learning to deal with coconuts is a recent achievement, and we are face to face with a very good example of evolution going on.
[Illustration: EARLY LIFE-HISTORY OF THE SALMON
1. The fertilised egg, shed in the gravelly bed of the river.
2. The embryo within the egg, just before hatching. The embryo has been constricted off from the yolk-laden portion of the egg.
3. The newly hatched salmon, or alevin, encumbered with its legacy of yolk (Y.S.).
4 and 5. The larval salmon, still being nourished from the yolk-sac (Y.S.), which is diminishing in size as the fish grows larger.
6. The salmon fry about six weeks old, with the yolk fully absorbed, so that the young fish has now to feed for itself. The fry become parr, which go to the sea as smolts, and return as grilse.
In all cases the small figures to the right indicate the natural size.]
The Story of the Salmon
In late autumn or in winter the salmon spawn in the rivers. The female makes a shallow trough in the gravel by moving her tail from side to side, and therein lays many eggs. The male, who is in attendance, fertilises these with the milt, and then the female covers them deeply with gravel. The process is repeated over and over again for a week or more till all the eggs are shed. For three to four months the eggs develop, and eventually there emerge the larvae or alevins, which lurk among the pebbles. They cannot swim much, for they are encumbered by a big legacy of yolk. In a few weeks, perhaps eight, the protruding bag of yolk has disappeared and the fry, about an inch long, begin to move about more actively and to fend for themselves. By the end of the year they have grown to be rather trout-like parr, about four inches long. In two years these are double that length. Usually in the second year, but it may be earlier or later, the parr become silvery smolts, which go out to sea, usually about the month of May. They feed on young herring and the like and grow large and strong. When they are about three and a half years old they come up the rivers as grilse and may spawn. Or they may pass through the whole grilse stage in the sea and come up the rivers with all the characters of the full-grown fish. In many cases the salmon spawn only once, and some (they are called kelts after spawning) are so much exhausted by starting a new generation that they die or fall a victim to otters and other enemies. In the case of the salmon of the North Pacific (in the genus Oncorhynchus, not Salmo) all the individuals die after spawning, none being able to return to the sea. It must be remembered that full-grown salmon do not as a rule feed in fresh water, though they may be unable to resist snapping at the angler's strange creations. A very interesting fact is that the salmon keeps as it were a diary of its movements, which vary a good deal in different rivers. This diary is written in the scales, and a careful reading of the concentric lines on the scales shows the age of the fish, and when it went out to sea, and whether it has spawned or not, and more besides.
Interpretation of the Salmon's Story
When an animal frequents two different haunts, in one of which it breeds, it is very often safe to say that the breeding-place represents the original home. The flounder is quite comfortable far up the rivers, but it has to go to the shore-waters to spawn, and there is no doubt that the flounder is a marine fish which has recently learned to colonise the fresh waters. Its relatives, like plaice and sole, are strictly marine. But it is impossible to make a dogma of the rule that the breeding-place corresponds to the original home. Thus some kinds of bass, which belong to the marine family of sea-perches, live in the sea or in estuaries, while two have become permanent residents in fresh water. Or, again, the members of the herring family are very distinctively marine, but the shad, which belong to this family, spawn in rivers and may spend their lives there.
So there are two different ways of interpreting the life-history of the salmon. Some authorities regard the salmon as a marine fish which is establishing itself in fresh water. But others read the story the other way and regard the salmon as a member of a freshwater race, that has taken to the sea for feeding purposes. In regard to trout, we know that the ranks of those in rivers and lakes are continually being reinforced by migrants from the sea, and that some trout go down to the sea while others remain in the freshwater. We know also in regard to a related fish, the char, that while the great majority of kinds are now permanent residents in cold and deep, isolated northern lakes, there are Arctic forms which live in the sea but enter the rivers to spawn. These facts favour the view that the salmon was originally a marine fish. But there are arguments on both sides, and, for our present purpose, the important fact is that the salmon is conquering two haunts. Its evolution is going on.
The Romance of the Eel
Early in summer, at dates varying with the distance of the rivers from the open Atlantic, crowds of young eels or elvers come up-stream. Sometimes the procession or eel-fare includes thousands of individuals, each about the length of our first finger, and as thick as a stout knitting needle. They obey an inborn impulse to swim against the stream, seeking automatically to have both sides of their body equally stimulated by the current. So they go straight ahead. The obligation works only during the day, for when the sun goes down behind the hills the elvers snuggle under stones or beneath the bank and rest till dawn. In the course of time they reach the quiet upper reaches of the river or go up rivulets and drainpipes to the isolated ponds. Their impulse to go on must be very imperious, for they may wriggle up the wet moss by the side of a waterfall or even make a short excursion in a damp meadow.
In the quiet-flowing stretches of the river or in the ponds they feed and grow for years and years. They account for a good many young fishes. Eventually, after five or six years in the case of the males, six to eight years in the case of the females, the well-grown fishes, perhaps a foot and a half to two feet long, are seized by a novel restlessness. They are beginning to be mature. They put on a silvery jacket and become large of eye, and they return to the sea. In getting away from the pond it may be necessary to wriggle through the damp meadow-grass before reaching the river. They travel by night and rather excitedly. The Arctic Ocean is too cold for them and the North Sea too shallow. They must go far out to sea, to where the old margin of the once larger continent of Europe slopes down to the great abysses, from the Hebrides southwards. Eels seem to spawn in the deep dark water; but the just liberated eggs have not yet been found. The young fry rises to near the surface and becomes a knife-blade-like larva, transparent all but its eye. It lives for many months in this state, growing to be about three inches long, rising and sinking in the water, and swimming gently. These open-sea young eels are known as Leptocephali, a name given to them before their real nature was proved. They gradually become shorter, and the shape changes from knife-blade-like to cylindrical. During this change they fast, and the weight of their delicate body decreases. They turn into glass-eels, about 2-1/2 inches long, like a knitting-needle in girth. They begin to move towards the distant shores and rivers, and they may be a year and a half old before they reach their destination and go up-stream as elvers. Those that ascend the rivers of the Eastern Baltic must have journeyed three thousand miles. It is certain that no eel ever matures or spawns in fresh water. It is practically certain that all the young eels ascending the rivers of North Europe have come in from the Atlantic, some of them perhaps from the Azores or further out still. It is interesting to inquire how the young eels circumvent the Falls of the Rhine and get into Lake Constance, or how their kindred on the other side of the Atlantic overcome the obstacle of Niagara; but it is more important to lay emphasis on the variety of habitats which this fish is trying—the deep waters, the open sea, the shore, the river, the pond, and even, it may be, a little taste of solid earth. It seems highly probable that the common eel is a deep-water marine fish which has learned to colonise the freshwaters. It has been adventurous and it has succeeded. The only shadow on the story of achievement is that there seems to be no return from the spawning. There is little doubt that death is the nemesis of their reproduction. In any case, no adult eel ever comes back from the deep sea. We are minded of Goethe's hard saying: "Death is Nature's expert advice to get plenty of life."
Sec. 4
Forming New Habits
There is a well-known mudfish of Australia, Neoceratodus by name, which has turned its swim-bladder into a lung and comes to the surface to spout. It expels vitiated air with considerable force and takes fresh gulps. At the same time, like an ordinary fish, it has gills which allow the usual interchange of gases between the blood and the water. Now this Australian mudfish or double-breather (Dipnoan), which may be a long way over a yard in length, is a direct and little-changed descendant of an ancient extinct fish, Ceratodus, which lived in Mesozoic times, as far back as the Jurassic, which probably means over five millions of years ago. The Queensland mudfish is an antiquity, and there has not been much change in its lineage for millions of years. We might take it as an illustration of the inertia of evolution. And yet, though its structure has changed but little, the fish probably illustrates evolution in process, for it is a fish that is learning to breathe dry air. It cannot leave the water; but it can live comfortably in pools which are foul with decomposing animal and vegetable matter. In partially dried-up and foul waterholes, full of dead fishes of various kinds, Neoceratodus has been found vigorous and lively. Unless we take the view, which is possible, that the swim-bladder of fishes was originally a lung, the mud-fishes are learning to breathe dry air. They illustrate evolution agoing.
The herring-gull is by nature a fish-eater; but of recent years, in some parts of Britain, it has been becoming in the summer months more and more of a vegetarian, scooping out the turnips, devouring potatoes, settling on the sheaves in the harvest field and gorging itself with grain. Similar experiments, usually less striking, are known in many birds; but the most signal illustration is that of the kea or Nestor parrot of New Zealand, which has taken to lighting on the loins of the sheep, tearing away the fleece, cutting at the skin, and gouging out fat. Now the parrot belongs to a vegetarian or frugivorous stock, and this change of diet in the relatively short time since sheep-ranches were established in New Zealand is very striking. Here, since we know the dates, we may speak of evolution going on under our eyes. It must be remembered that variations in habit may give an animal a new opportunity to test variations in structure which arise mysteriously from within, as expressions of germinal changefulness rather than as imprints from without. For of the transmissibility of the latter there is little secure evidence.
Experiments in Locomotion
It is very interesting to think of the numerous types of locomotion which animals have discovered—pulling and punting, sculling and rowing, and of the changes that are rung on these four main methods. How striking is the case of the frilled lizard (Chlamydosaurus) of Australia, which at the present time is, as it were, experimenting in bipedal progression—always a rather eventful thing to do. It gets up on its hind-legs and runs totteringly for a few feet, just like a baby learning to walk.
How beautiful is the adventure which has led our dipper or water-ouzel—a bird allied to the wrens—to try walking and flying under water! How admirable is the volplaning of numerous parachutists—"flying fish," "flying frog," "flying dragon," "flying phalanger," "flying squirrel," and more besides, which take great leaps through the air. For are these not the splendid failures that might have succeeded in starting new modes of flight?
Most daring of all, perhaps, are the aerial journeys undertaken by many small spiders. On a breezy morning, especially in the autumn, they mount on gate-posts and palings and herbage, and, standing with their head to the wind, pay out three or four long threads of silk. When the wind tugs at these threads, the spinners let go, and are borne, usually back downwards, on the wings of the wind from one parish to another. It is said that if the wind falls they can unfurl more sail, or furl if it rises. In any case, these wingless creatures make aerial journeys. When tens of thousands of the used threads sink to earth, there is a "shower of gossamer." On his Beagle voyage Darwin observed that vast numbers of small gossamer spiders were borne on to the ship when it was sixty miles distant from the land.
New Devices
It is impossible, we must admit, to fix dates, except in a few cases, relatively recent; but there is a smack of modernity in some striking devices which we can observe in operation to-day. Thus no one will dispute the statement that spiders are thoroughly terrestrial animals breathing dry air, but we have the fact of the water-spider conquering the under-water world. There are a few spiders about the seashore, and a few that can survive douching with freshwater, but the particular case of the true water-spider, Argyroneta natans, stands by itself because the creature, as regards the female at least, has conquered the sub-aquatic environment. A flattish web is woven, somehow, underneath the water, and pegged down by threads of silk. Along a special vertical line the mother spider ascends to the surface and descends again, having entangled air in the hairs of her body. She brushes off this air underneath her web, which is thereby buoyed up into a sort of dome. She does this over and over again, never getting wet all the time, until the domed web has become like a diving-bell, full of dry air. In this eloquent anticipation of man's rational device, this creature—far from being endowed with reason—lays her eggs and looks after her young. The general significance of the facts is that when competition is keen, a new area of exploitation is a promised land. Thus spiders have spread over all the earth except the polar areas. But here is a spider with some spirit of adventure, which has endeavoured, instead of trekking, to find a new corner near at home. It has tackled a problem surely difficult for a terrestrial animal, the problem of living in great part under water, and it has solved it in a manner at once effective and beautiful.
In Conclusion
We have given but a few representative illustrations of a great theme. When we consider the changefulness of living creatures, the transformations of cultivated plants and domesticated animals, the gradual alterations in the fauna of a country, the search after new haunts, the forming of new habits, and the discovery of many inventions, are we not convinced that Evolution is going on? And why should it stop?
VII
THE DAWN OF MIND
THE DAWN OF MIND
In the story of evolution there is no chapter more interesting than the emergence of mind in the animal kingdom. But it is a difficult chapter to read, partly because "mind" cannot be seen or measured, only inferred from the outward behaviour of the creature, and partly because it is almost impossible to avoid reading ourselves into the much simpler animals.
Sec. 1
Two Extremes to be Avoided
The one extreme is that of uncritical generosity which credits every animal, like Brer Rabbit—who, by the way, was the hare—with human qualities. The other extreme is that of thinking of the animal as if it were an automatic machine, in the working of which there is no place or use for mind. Both these extremes are to be avoided.
When Professor Whitman took the eggs of the Passenger Pigeon (which became extinct not long ago with startling rapidity) and placed them a few inches to one side of the nest, the bird looked a little uneasy and put her beak under her body as if to feel for something that was not there. But she did not try to retrieve her eggs, close at hand as they were. In a short time she flew away altogether. This shows that the mind of the pigeon is in some respects very different from the mind of man. On the other hand, when a certain clever dog, carrying a basket of eggs, with the handle in his mouth, came to a stile which had to be negotiated, he laid the basket on the ground, pushed it gently through a low gap to the other side, and then took a running leap over. We dare not talk of this dog as an automatic machine.
A Caution in Regard to Instinct
In studying the behaviour of animals, which is the only way of getting at their mind, for it is only of our own mind that we have direct knowledge, it is essential to give prominence to the fact that there has been throughout the evolution of living creatures a strong tendency to enregister or engrain capacities of doing things effectively. Thus certain abilities come to be inborn; they are parts of the inheritance, which will express themselves whenever the appropriate trigger is pulled. The newly born child does not require to learn its breathing movements, as it afterwards requires to learn its walking movements. The ability to go through the breathing movements is inborn, engrained, enregistered.
In other words, there are hereditary pre-arrangements of nerve-cells and muscle-cells which come into activity almost as easily as the beating of the heart. In a minute or two the newborn pigling creeps close to its mother and sucks milk. It has not to learn how to do this any more than we have to learn to cough or sneeze. Thus animals have many useful ready-made, or almost ready-made, capacities of doing apparently clever things. In simple cases of these inborn pre-arrangements we speak of reflex actions; in more complicated cases, of instinctive behaviour. Now the caution is this, that while these inborn capacities usually work well in natural conditions, they sometimes work badly when the ordinary routine is disturbed. We see this when a pigeon continues sitting for many days on an empty nest, or when it fails to retrieve its eggs only two inches away. But it would be a mistake to call the pigeon, because of this, an unutterably stupid bird. We have only to think of the achievements of homing pigeons to know that this cannot be true. We must not judge animals in regard to those kinds of behaviour which have been handed over to instinct, and go badly agee when the normal routine is disturbed. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the enregistered instinctive capacities work well, and the advantage of their becoming stereotyped was to leave the animal more free for adventures at a higher level. Being "a slave of instinct" may give the animal a security that enables it to discover some new home or new food or new joy. Somewhat in the same way, a man of methodical habits, which he has himself established, may gain leisure to make some new departure of racial profit.
When we draw back our finger from something very hot, or shut our eye to avoid a blow from a rebounding branch, we do not will the action; and this is more or less the case, probably, when a young mammal sucks its mother for the first time. Some Mound-birds of Celebes lay their eggs in warm volcanic ash by the shore of the sea, others in a great mass of fermenting vegetation; it is inborn in the newly hatched bird to struggle out as quickly as it can from such a strange nest, else it will suffocate. If it stops struggling too soon, it perishes, for it seems that the trigger of the instinct cannot be pulled twice. Similarly, when the eggs of the turtle, that have been laid in the sand of the shore, hatch out, the young ones make instinctively for the sea. Some of the crocodiles bury their eggs two feet or so below the surface among sand and decaying vegetation—an awkward situation for a birthplace. When the young crocodile is ready to break out of the egg-shell, just as a chick does at the end of the three weeks of brooding, it utters instinctively a piping cry. On hearing this, the watchful mother digs away the heavy blankets, otherwise the young crocodile would be buried alive at birth. Now there is no warrant for believing that the young Mound-birds, young crocodiles, and young turtles have an intelligent appreciation of what they do when they are hatched. They act instinctively, "as to the manner born." But this is not to say that their activity is not backed by endeavour or even suffused with a certain amount of awareness. Of course, it is necessarily difficult for man, who is so much a creature of intelligence, to get even an inkling of the mental side of instinctive behaviour.
In many of the higher reaches of animal instinct, as in courtship or nest-building, in hunting or preparing the food, it looks as if the starting of the routine activity also "rang up" the higher centres of the brain and put the intelligence on the qui vive, ready to interpose when needed. So the twofold caution is this: (1) We must not depreciate the creature too much if, in unusual circumstances, it acts in an ineffective way along lines of behaviour which are normally handed over to instinct; and (2) we must leave open the possibility that even routine instinctive behaviour may be suffused with awareness and backed by endeavour.
Sec. 2
A Useful Law
But how are we to know when to credit the animal with intelligence and when with something less spontaneous? Above all, how are we to know when the effective action, like opening the mouth the very instant it is touched by food in the mother's beak, is just a physiological action like coughing or sneezing, and when there is behind it—a mind at work? The answer to this question is no doubt that given by Prof. Lloyd Morgan, who may be called the founder of comparative psychology, that we must describe the piece of behaviour very carefully, just as it occurred, without reading anything into it, and that we must not ascribe it to a higher faculty if it can be satisfactorily accounted for in terms of a lower one. In following this principle we may be sometimes niggardly, for the behaviour may have a mental subtlety that we have missed; but in nine cases out of ten our conclusions are likely to be sound. It is the critical, scientific way.
Bearing this law in mind, let us take a survey of the emergence of mind among backboned animals.
Senses of Fishes
Fishes cannot shut their eyes, having no true lids; but the eyes themselves are very well developed and the vision is acute, especially for moving objects. Except in gristly fishes, the external opening to the ear has been lost, so that sound-waves and coarser vibrations must influence the inner ear, which is well developed, through the surrounding flesh and bones. It seems that the main use of the ear in fishes is in connection with balancing, not with hearing. In many cases, however, the sense of hearing has been demonstrated; thus fishes will come to the side of a pond to be fed when a bell is rung or when a whistle is blown by someone not visible from the water. The fact that many fishes pay no attention at all to loud noises does not prove that they are deaf, for an animal may hear a sound and yet remain quite indifferent or irresponsive. This merely means that the sound has no vital interest for the animal. Some fishes, such as bullhead and dogfish, have a true sense of smell, detecting by their nostrils very dilute substances permeating the water from a distance. Others, such as members of the cod family, perceive their food in part at least by the sense of taste, which is susceptible to substances near at hand and present in considerable quantity. This sense of taste may be located on the fins as well as about the mouth. At this low level the senses of smell and taste do not seem to be very readily separated. The chief use of the sensitive line or lateral line seen on each side of a bony fish is to make the animal aware of slow vibrations and changes of pressure in the water. The skin responds to pressures, the ear to vibrations of high frequency; the lateral line is between the two in its function.
Interesting Ways of Fishes
The brain of the ordinary bony fish is at a very low level. Thus the cerebral hemispheres, destined to become more and more the seat of intelligence, are poorly developed. In gristly fishes, like skates and sharks, the brain is much more promising. But although the state of the brain does not lead one to expect very much from a bony fish like trout or eel, haddock or herring, illustrations are not wanting of what might be called pretty pieces of behaviour. Let us select a few cases.
The Stickleback's Nest
The three-spined and two-spined sticklebacks live equally well in fresh or salt water; the larger fifteen-spined stickleback is entirely marine. In all three species the male fish makes a nest, in fresh or brackish water in the first two cases, in shore-pools in the third case. The little species use the leaves and stems of water-plants; the larger species use seaweed and zoophyte. The leaves or fronds are entangled together and fastened by glue-like threads, secreted, strange to say, by the kidneys. It is just as if a temporary diseased condition had been regularised and turned to good purpose. Going through the nest several times, the male makes a little room in the middle. Partly by coercion and partly by coaxing he induces a female—first one and then another—to pass through the nest with two doors, depositing eggs during her short sojourn. The females go their way, and the male mounts guard over the nest. He drives off intruding fishes much bigger than himself. When the young are hatched, the male has for a time much to do, keeping his charges within bounds until they are able to move about with agility. It seems that sticklebacks are short-lived fishes, probably breeding only once; and it is reasonable to suppose that their success as a race depends to some extent on the paternal care. Now if we could believe that the nesting behaviour had appeared suddenly in its present form, we should be inclined to credit the fish with considerable mental ability. But we are less likely to be so generous if we reflect that the routine has been in all likelihood the outcome of a long racial process of slight improvements and critical testings. The secretion of the glue probably came about as a pathological variation; its utilisation was perhaps discovered by accident; the types that had wit enough to take advantage of this were most successful; the routine became enregistered hereditarily. The stickleback is not so clever as it looks.
The Mind of a Minnow
To find solid ground on which to base an appreciation of the behaviour of fishes, it is necessary to experiment, and we may refer to Miss Gertrude White's interesting work on American minnows and sticklebacks. After the fishes had become quite at home in their artificial surroundings, their lessons began. Cloth packets, one of which contained meat and the other cotton, were suspended at opposite ends of the aquarium. The mud-minnows did not show that they perceived either packet, though they swam close by them; the sticklebacks were intrigued at once. Those that went towards the packet containing meat darted furiously upon it and pulled at it with great excitement. Those that went towards the cotton packet turned sharply away when they were within about two inches off. They then perceived what those at the other end were after and joined them—a common habit amongst fishes. Although the minnows were not interested in the tiny "bags of mystery," they were even more alert than the sticklebacks in perceiving moving objects in or on the water, and there is no doubt that both these shallow-water species discover their food largely by sense of sight.
The next set of lessons had to do with colour-associations. The fishes were fed on minced snail, chopped earthworm, fragments of liver, and the like, and the food was given to them from the end of forceps held above the surface of the water, so that the fishes could not be influenced by smell. They had to leap out of the water to take the food from the forceps. Discs of coloured cardboard were slipped over the end of the forceps, so that what the fishes saw was a morsel of food in the centre of a coloured disc. After a week or so of preliminary training, they were so well accustomed to the coloured discs that the presentation of one served as a signal for the fishes to dart to the surface and spring out of the water. When baits of paper were substituted for the food, the fishes continued to jump at the discs. When, however, a blue disc was persistently used for the paper bait and a red disc for the real food, or vice versa, some of the minnows learned to discriminate infallibly between shadow and substance, both when these were presented alternately and when they were presented simultaneously. This is not far from the dawn of mind.
In the course of a few lessons, both minnows and sticklebacks learned to associate particular colours with food, and other associations were also formed. A kind of larva that a minnow could make nothing of after repeated trials was subsequently ignored. The approach of the experimenter or anyone else soon began to serve as a food-signal. There can be no doubt that in the ordinary life of fishes there is a process of forming useful associations and suppressing useless responses. Given an inborn repertory of profitable movements that require no training, given the power of forming associations such as those we have illustrated, and given a considerable degree of sensory alertness along certain lines, fishes do not require much more. And in truth they have not got it. Moving with great freedom in three dimensions in a medium that supports them and is very uniform and constant, able in most cases to get plenty of food without fatiguing exertions and to dispense with it for considerable periods if it is scarce, multiplying usually in great abundance so that the huge infantile mortality hardly counts, rarely dying a natural death but usually coming with their strength unabated to a violent end, fishes hold their own in the struggle for existence without much in the way of mental endowment. Their brain has more to do with motion than with mentality, and they have remained at a low psychical level.
Yet just as we should greatly misjudge our own race if we confined our attention to everyday routine, so in our total, as distinguished from our average, estimate of fishes, we must remember the salmon surmounting the falls, the wary trout eluding the angler's skill, the common mud-skipper (Periophthalmus) of many tropical shores which climbs on the rocks and the roots of the mangrove-trees, or actively hunts small shore-animals. We must remember the adventurous life-history of the eel and the quaint ways in which some fishes, males especially, look after their family. The male sea-horse puts the eggs in his breast-pocket; the male Kurtus carries them on the top of his head; the cock-paidle or lumpsucker guards them and aerates them in a corner of a shore-pool.
Sec. 3
The Mind of Amphibians
Towards the end of the age of the Old Red Sandstone or Devonian, a great step in evolution was taken—the emergence of Amphibians. The earliest representatives had fish-like characters even more marked than those which may be discerned in the tadpoles of our frogs and toads, and there is no doubt that amphibians sprang from a fish stock. But they made great strides, associated in part with their attempts to get out of the water on to dry land. From fossil forms we cannot say much in regard to soft parts; but if we consider the living representatives of the class, we may credit amphibians with such important acquisitions as fingers and toes, a three-chambered heart, true ventral lungs, a drum to the ear, a mobile tongue, and vocal cords. When animals began to be able to grasp an object and when they began to be able to utter sufficient sounds, two new doors were opened. Apart from insects, whose instrumental music had probably begun before the end of the Devonian age, amphibians were the first animals to have a voice. The primary meaning of this voice was doubtless, as it is to-day in our frogs, a sex-call; but it was the beginning of what was destined to play a very important part in the evolution of the mind. In the course of ages the significance of the voice broadened out; it became a parental call; it became an infant's cry. Broadening still, it became a very useful means of recognition among kindred, especially in the dark and in the intricacies of the forest. Ages passed, and the voice rose on another turn of the evolutionary spiral to be expressive of particular emotions beyond the immediate circle of sex—emotions of joy and of fear, of jealousy and of contentment. Finally, we judge, the animal—perhaps the bird was first—began to give utterance to particular "words," indicative not merely of emotions, but of particular things with an emotional halo, such as "food," "enemy," "home." Long afterwards, words became in man the medium of reasoned discourse. Sentences were made and judgments expressed. But was not the beginning in the croaking of Amphibia?
Senses of Amphibians
Frogs have good eyes, and the toad's eyes are "jewels." There is evidence of precise vision in the neat way in which a frog catches a fly, flicking out its tongue, which is fixed in front and loose behind. There is also experimental proof that a frog discriminates between red and blue, or between red and white, and an interesting point is that while our skin is sensitive to heat rays but not to light, the skin of the frog answers back to light rays as well. Professor Yerkes experimented with a frog which had to go through a simple labyrinth if it wished to reach a tank of water. At the first alternative between two paths, a red card was placed on the wrong side and a white one on the other. When the frog had learned to take the correct path, marked by the white card, Prof. Yerkes changed the cards. The confusion of the frog showed how thoroughly it had learned its lesson.
We know very little in regard to sense of smell or taste in amphibians; but the sense of hearing is well developed, more developed than might be inferred from the indifference that frogs show to almost all sounds except the croaking of their kindred and splashes in the water.
The toad looks almost sagacious when it is climbing up a bank, and some of the tree-frogs are very alert; but there is very little that we dare say about the amphibian mind. We have mentioned that frogs may learn the secret of a simple maze, and toads sometimes make for a particular spawning-pond from a considerable distance. But an examination of their brains, occupying a relatively small part of the broad, flat skull, warns us not to expect much intelligence. On the other hand, when we take frogs along a line that is very vital to them, namely, the discrimination of palatable and unpalatable insects, we find, by experiment, that they are quick to learn and that they remember their lessons for many days. Frogs sometimes deposit their eggs in very unsuitable pools of water; but perhaps that is not quite so stupid as it looks. The egg-laying is a matter that has been, as it were, handed over to instinctive registration.
Experiments in Parental Care
It must be put to the credit of amphibians that they have made many experiments in methods of parental care, as if they were feeling their way to new devices. A common frog lays her clumps of eggs in the cradle of the water, sometimes far over a thousand together; the toad winds two long strings round and between water-weeds; and in both cases that is all. There is no parental care, and the prolific multiplication covers the enormous infantile mortality. This is the spawning solution of the problem of securing the continuance of the race. But there is another solution, that of parental care associated with an economical reduction of the number of eggs. Thus the male of the Nurse-Frog (Alytes), not uncommon on the Continent, fixes a string of twenty to fifty eggs to the upper part of his hind-legs, and retires to his hole, only coming out at night to get some food and to keep up the moisture about the eggs. In three weeks, when the tadpoles are ready to come out, he plunges into the pond and is freed from his living burden and his family cares. In the case of the thoroughly aquatic Surinam Toad (Pipa), the male helps to press the eggs, perhaps a hundred in number, on to the back of the female, where each sinks into a pocket of skin with a little lid. By and by fully formed young toads jump out of the pockets.
In the South American tree-frogs called Nototrema there is a pouch on the back of the female in which the eggs develop, and it is interesting to find that in some species what come out are ordinary tadpoles, while in other species the young emerge as miniatures of their parents. Strangest of all, perhaps, is the case of Darwin's Frog (Rhinoderma of Chili), where the young, about ten to fifteen in number, develop in the male's croaking-sacs, which become in consequence enormously distended. Eventually the strange spectacle is seen of miniature frogs jumping out of their father's mouth. Needless to say we are not citing these methods of parental care as examples of intelligence; but perhaps they correct the impression of amphibians as a rather humdrum race. Whatever be the mental aspect of the facts, there has certainly been some kind of experimenting, and the increase of parental care, so marked in many amphibians, with associated reduction of the number of offspring is a finger-post on the path of progress.
Sec. 4
The Reptilian Mind
We speak of the wisdom of the serpent; but it is not very easy to justify the phrase. Among all the multitude of reptiles—snakes, lizards, turtles, and crocodiles, a motley crowd—we cannot see much more than occasional traces of intelligence. The inner life remains a tiny rill.
No doubt many reptiles are very effective; but it is an instinctive rather than an intelligent efficiency. The well-known "soft-shell" tortoise of the United States swims with powerful strokes and runs so quickly that it can hardly be overtaken. It hunts vigorously for crayfish and insect larvae in the rivers. It buries itself in the mud when cold weather comes. It may lie on a floating log ready to slip into the water at a moment's notice; it may bask on a sunny bank or in the warm shallows. Great wariness is shown in choosing times and places for egg-laying. The mother tramps the earth down upon the buried eggs. All is effective. Similar statements might be made in regard to scores of other reptiles; but what we see is almost wholly of the nature of instinctive routine, and we get little glimpse of more than efficiency and endeavour.
In a few cases there is proof of reptiles finding their way back to their homes from a considerable distance, and recognition of persons is indubitable. Gilbert White remarks of his tortoise: "Whenever the good old lady came in sight who had waited on it for more than thirty years, it always hobbled with awkward alacrity towards its benefactress, while to strangers it was altogether inattentive." Of definite learning there are a few records. Thus Professor Yerkes studied a sluggish turtle of retiring disposition, taking advantage of its strong desire to efface itself. On the path of the darkened nest of damp grass he interposed a simple maze in the form of a partitioned box. After wandering about constantly for thirty-five minutes the turtle found its way through the maze by chance. Two hours afterwards it reached the nest in fifteen minutes; and after another interval of two hours it only required five minutes. After the third trial, the routes became more direct, there was less aimless wandering. The time of the twentieth trial was forty-five seconds; that of the thirtieth, forty seconds. In the thirtieth case, the path followed was quite direct, and so it was on the fiftieth trip, which only required thirty-five seconds. Of course, the whole thing did not amount to very much; but there was a definite learning, a learning from experience, which has played an important part in the evolution of animal behaviour.
Comparing reptiles with amphibians, we may recognise an increased masterliness of behaviour and a hint of greater plasticity. The records of observers who have made pets of reptiles suggest that the life of feeling or emotion is growing stronger, and so do stories, if they can be accepted, which suggest the beginning of conjugal affection.
The error must be guarded against of interpreting in terms of intelligence what is merely the outcome of long-continued structure adaptation. When the limbless lizard called the Slow-worm is suddenly seized by the tail, it escapes by surrendering the appendage, which breaks across a preformed weak plane. But this is a reflex action, not a reflective one. It is comparable to our sudden withdrawal of our finger from a very hot cinder. The Egg-eating African snake Dasypeltis gets the egg of a bird into its gullet unbroken, and cuts the shell against downward-projecting sharp points of the vertebrae. None of the precious contents is lost and the broken "empties" are returned. It is admirable, indeed unsurpassable; but it is not intelligent.
Sec. 5
Mind in Birds
Sight and hearing are highly developed in birds, and the senses, besides pulling the triggers of inborn efficiencies, supply the raw materials for intelligence. There is some truth, though not the whole truth, in the old philosophical dictum, that there is nothing in the intellect which was not previously in the senses. Many people have admired the certainty and alacrity with which gulls pick up a fragment of biscuit from the white wake of a steamer, and the incident is characteristic. In their power of rapidly altering the focus of the eye, birds are unsurpassed.
To the sense of sight in birds, the sense of hearing comes a good second. A twig breaks under our feet, and out sounds the danger-call of the bird we were trying to watch. Many young birds, like partridges, respond when two or three hours old to the anxious warning note of the parents, and squat motionless on the ground, though other sounds, such as the excited clucking of a foster-mother hen, leave them indifferent. They do not know what they are doing when they squat; they are obeying the living hand of the past which is within them. Their behaviour is instinctive. But the present point is the discriminating quality of the sense of hearing; and that is corroborated by the singing of birds. It is emotional art, expressing feelings in the medium of sound. On the part of the females, who are supposed to listen, it betokens a cultivated ear.
As to the other senses, touch is not highly developed except about the bill, where it reaches a climax in birds like the wood-cock, which probe for unseen earthworms in the soft soil. Taste seems to be poorly developed, for most birds bolt their food, but there is sometimes an emphatic rejection of unpalatable things, like toads and caterpillars. Of smell in birds little is known, but it has been proved to be present in certain cases, e.g. in some nocturnal birds of prey. It seems certain that it is by sight, not by smell, that the eagles gather to the carcass; but perhaps there is more smell in birds than they are usually credited with. One would like to experiment with the oil from the preen gland of birds to see whether the scent of this does not help in the recognition of kin by kin at night or amid the darkness of the forest. There may be other senses in birds, such as a sense of temperature and a sense of balance; but no success has attended the attempts made to demonstrate a magnetic sense, which has been impatiently postulated by students of bird migration in order to "explain" how the birds find their way. The big fact is that in birds there are two widely open gateways of knowledge, the sense of sight and the sense of hearing.
Instinctive Aptitudes
Many a young water-bird, such as a coot, swims right away when it is tumbled into water for the first time. So chicks peck without any learning or teaching, very young ducklings catch small moths that flit by, and young plovers lie low when the danger-signal sounds. But birds seem strangely limited as regards many of these instinctive capacities—limited when compared with the "little-brained" ants and bees, which have from the first such a rich repertory of ready-made cleverness. The limitation in birds is of great interest, for it means that intelligence is coming to its own and is going to take up the reins at many corners of the daily round. Professor Lloyd Morgan observed that his chickens incubated in the laboratory had no instinctive awareness of the significance of their mother's cluck when she was brought outside the door. Although thirsty and willing to drink from a moistened finger-tip, they did not instinctively recognize water, even when they walked through a saucerful. Only when they happened to peck their toes as they stood in the water did they appreciate water as the stuff they wanted, and raise their bills up to the sky. Once or twice they actually stuffed their crops with "worms" of red worsted!
Instinctive aptitudes, then, the young birds have, but these are more limited than in ants, bees, and wasps; and the reason is to be found in the fact that the brain is now evolving on the tack of what Sir Ray Lankester has called "educability." Young birds learn with prodigious rapidity; the emancipation of the mind from the tyranny of hereditary obligations has begun. Young birds make mistakes, like the red worsted mistake, but they do not make the same mistakes often. They are able to profit by experience in a very rapid way. We do not mean that creatures of the little-brain type, like ants, bees, and wasps, are unable to profit by experience or are without intelligence. There are no such hard-and-fast lines. We mean that in the ordinary life of insects the enregistered instinctive capacities are on the whole sufficient for the occasion, and that intelligent educability is very slightly developed. Nor do we mean that birds are quite emancipated from the tyranny of engrained instinctive obligations, and can always "ring up" intelligence in a way that is impossible for the stereotyped bee. The sight of a pigeon brooding on an empty nest, while her two eggs lie disregarded only a couple of inches away, is enough to show that along certain lines birds may find it impossible to get free from the trammels of instinct. The peculiar interest of birds is that they have many instincts and yet a notable power of learning intelligently.
Intelligence co-operating with Instinct
Professor Lloyd Morgan was foster-parent to two moorhens which grew up in isolation from their kindred. They swam instinctively, but they would not dive, neither in a large bath nor in a current. But it happened one day when one of these moorhens was swimming in a pool on a Yorkshire stream, that a puppy came barking down the bank and made an awkward feint towards the young bird. In a moment the moorhen dived, disappeared from view, and soon partially reappeared, his head just peeping above the water beneath the overhanging bank. This was the first time the bird had dived, and the performance was absolutely true to type.
There can be little doubt as to the meaning of this observation. The moorhen has an hereditary or instinctive capacity for swimming and diving, but the latter is not so easily called into activity as the former. The particular moorhen in question had enjoyed about two months of swimming experience, which probably counted for something, but in the course of that experience nothing had pulled the trigger of the diving capacity. On an eventful day the young moorhen saw and heard the dog; it was emotionally excited; it probably did to some extent intelligently appreciate a novel and meaningful situation. Intelligence cooperated with instinct, and the bird dived appropriately.
Birds have inborn predispositions to certain effective ways of pecking, scratching, swimming, diving, flying, crouching, lying low, nest-building, and so on; but they are marked off from the much more purely instinctive ants and bees by the extent to which individual "nurture" seems to mingle with the inherited "nature." The two together result in the fine product which we call the bird's behaviour. After Lloyd Morgan's chicks had tried a few conspicuous and unpalatable caterpillars, they had no use for any more. They learned in their early days with prodigious rapidity, illustrating the deep difference between the "big-brain" type, relatively poor in its endowment of instinctive capacities, but eminently "educable," and the "little-brain" type, say, of ants and bees, richly endowed with instinctive capacities, but very far from being quick or glad to learn. We owe it to Sir Ray Lankester to have made it clear that these two types of brain are, as it were, on different tacks of evolution, and should not be directly pitted against one another. The "little-brain" type makes for a climax in the ant, where instinctive behaviour reaches a high degree of perfection; the "big-brain" type reaches its climax in horse and dog, in elephant and monkey. The particular interest that attaches to the behaviour of birds is in the combination of a good deal of instinct with a great deal of intelligent learning. This is well illustrated when birds make a nest out of new materials or in some quite novel situation. It is clearly seen when birds turn to some new kind of food, like the Kea parrot, which attacks the sheep in New Zealand.
Some young woodpeckers are quite clever in opening fir cones to get at the seeds, and this might be hastily referred to a well-defined hereditary capacity. But the facts are that the parents bring their young ones first the seeds themselves, then partly opened cones, and then intact ones. There is an educative process, and so it is in scores of cases.
Using their Wits
When the Greek eagle lifts the Greek tortoise in its talons, and lets it fall from a height so that the strong carapace is broken and the flesh exposed, it is making intelligent use of an expedient. Whether it discovered the expedient by experimenting, as is possible, or by chance, as is more likely, it uses it intelligently. In the same way herring-gulls lift sea-urchins and clams in their bills, and let them fall on the rocks so that the shells are broken. In the same way rooks deal with freshwater mussels.
The Thrush's Anvil
A very instructive case is the behaviour of the song-thrush when it takes a wood-snail in its beak and hammers it against a stone, its so-called anvil. To a young thrush, which she had brought up by hand, Miss Frances Pitt offered some wood-snails, but it took no interest in them until one put out its head and began to move about. The bird then pecked at the snail's horns, but was evidently puzzled when the creature retreated within the shelter of the shell. This happened over and over again, the thrush's inquisitive interest increasing day by day. It pecked at the shell and even picked it up by the lip, but no real progress was made till the sixth day, when the thrush seized the snail and beat it on the ground as it would a big worm. On the same day it picked up a shell and knocked it repeatedly against a stone, trying first one snail and then another. After fifteen minutes' hard work, the thrush managed to break one, and after that it was all easy. A certain predisposition to beat things on the ground was doubtless present, but the experiment showed that the use of an anvil could be arrived at by an untutored bird. After prolonged trying it found out how to deal with a difficult situation. It may be said that in more natural conditions this might be picked up by imitation, but while this is quite possible, it is useful to notice that experiments with animals lead us to doubt whether imitation counts for nearly so much as used to be believed.
Sec. 6
The Mind of the Mammal
When we watch a collie at a sheep-driving competition, or an elephant helping the forester, or a horse shunting waggons at a railway siding, we are apt to be too generous to the mammal mind. For in the cases we have just mentioned, part of man's mind has, so to speak, got into the animal's. On the other hand, when we study rabbits and guinea-pigs, we are apt to be too stingy, for these rodents are under the average of mammals, and those that live in domestication illustrate the stupefying effect of a too sheltered life. The same applies to domesticated sheep contrasted with wild sheep, or even with their own lambs. If we are to form a sound judgment on the intelligence of mammals we must not attend too much to those that have profited by man's training, nor to those whose mental life has been dulled by domestication.
Instinctive Aptitudes
What is to be said of the behaviour of beavers who gnaw the base of a tree with their chisel-edged teeth till only a narrow core is left—to snap in the first gale, bringing the useful branches down to the ground? What is to be said of the harvest-mouse constructing its nest, or of the squirrel making cache after cache of nuts? These and many similar pieces of behaviour are fundamentally instinctive, due to inborn predispositions of nerve-cells and muscle-cells. But in mammals they seem to be often attended by a certain amount of intelligent attention, saving the creature from the tyranny of routine so marked in the ways of ants and bees.
Sheer Dexterity
Besides instinctive aptitudes, which are exhibited in almost equal perfection by all the members of the same species, there are acquired dexterities which depend on individual opportunities. They are also marked by being outside and beyond ordinary routine—not that any rigorous boundary line can be drawn. We read that at Mathura on the Jumna doles of food are provided by the piety of pilgrims for the sacred river-tortoises, which are so crowded when there is food going that their smooth carapaces form a more or less continuous raft across the river. On that unsteady slippery bridge the Langur monkeys (Semnopithecus entellus) venture out and in spite of vicious snaps secure a share of the booty. This picture of the monkeys securing a footing on the moving mass of turtle-backs is almost a diagram of sheer dexterity. It illustrates the spirit of adventure, the will to experiment, which is, we believe, the main motive-force in new departures in behaviour.
Power of Association
A bull-terrier called Jasper, studied by Prof. J. B. Watson, showed great power of associating certain words with certain actions. From a position invisible to the dog the owner would give certain commands, such as "Go into the next room and bring me a paper lying on the floor." Jasper did this at once, and a score of similar things.
Lord Avebury's dog Van was accustomed to go to a box containing a small number of printed cards and select the card TEA or OUT, as the occasion suggested. It had established an association between certain black marks on a white background and the gratification of certain desires. It is probable that some of the extraordinary things horses and dogs have been known to do in the way of stamping a certain number of times in supposed indication of an answer to an arithmetical question (in the case of horses), or of the name of an object drawn (in the case of dogs), are dependent on clever associations established by the teacher between minute signs and a number of stampings. What is certain is that mammals have in varying degrees a strong power of establishing associations. There is often some delicacy in the association established. Everyone knows of cases where a dog, a cat, or a horse will remain quite uninterested, to all appearance, in its owner's movements until some little detail, such as taking a key from its peg, pulls the trigger. Now the importance of this in the wild life of the fox or the hare, the otter or the squirrel, is obviously that the young animals learn to associate certain sounds in their environment with definite possibilities. They have to learn an alphabet of woodcraft, the letters of which are chiefly sounds and scents.
The Dancing Mouse as a Pupil
The dancing or waltzing mouse is a Japanese variety with many peculiarities, such as having only one of the three semicircular canals of the ear well developed. It has a strong tendency to waltz round and round in circles without sufficient cause and to trip sideways towards its dormitory instead of proceeding in the orthodox head-on fashion. But this freak is a very educable creature, as Professor Yerkes has shown. In a careful way he confronted his mouse-pupil with alternative pathways marked by different degrees of illumination, or by different colours. If the mouse chose compartment A, it found a clear passage direct to its nest; if it chose compartment B, it was punished by a mild electric shock and it had to take a roundabout road home. Needless to say, the A compartment was sometimes to the right hand, sometimes to the left, else mere position would have been a guide. The experiments showed that the dancing mice learn to discriminate the right path from the wrong, and similar results have been got from other mammals, such as rats and squirrels. There is no proof of learning by ideas, but there is proof of learning by experience. And the same must be true in wild life.
Many mammals, such as cats and rats, learn how to manipulate puzzle-boxes and how to get at the treasure at the heart of a Hampton Court maze. Some of the puzzle-boxes, with a reward of food inside, are quite difficult, for the various bolts and bars have to be dealt with in a particular order, and yet many mammals master the problem. What is plain is that they gradually eliminate useless movements, that they make fewer and fewer mistakes, that they eventually succeed, and that they register the solution within themselves so that it remains with them for a time. It looks a little like the behaviour of a man who learns a game of skill without thinking. It is a learning by experience, not by ideas or reflection. Thus it is very difficult to suppose that a rat or a cat could form any idea or even picture of the Hampton Court maze—which they nevertheless master.
Learning Tricks
Given sufficient inducement many of the cleverer mammals will learn to do very sensible things, and no one is wise enough to say that they never understand what they are doing. Yet it is certain that trained animals often exhibit pieces of behaviour which are not nearly so clever as they look. The elephant at the Belle Vue Gardens in Manchester used to collect pennies from benevolent visitors. When it got a penny in its trunk it put it in the slot of an automatic machine which delivered up a biscuit. When a visitor gave the elephant a halfpenny it used to throw it back with disgust. At first sight this seemed almost wise, and there was no doubt some intelligent appreciation of the situation. But it was largely a matter of habituation, the outcome of careful and prolonged training. The elephant was laboriously taught to put the penny in the slot and to discriminate between the useful pennies and the useless halfpennies. It was not nearly so clever as it looked.
Using their Wits
In the beautiful Zoological Park in Edinburgh the Polar Bear was wont to sit on a rocky peninsula of a water-filled quarry. The visitors threw in buns, some of which floated on the surface. It was often easy for the Polar Bear to collect half a dozen by plunging into the pool. But it had discovered a more interesting way. At the edge of the peninsula it scooped the water gently with its huge paw and made a current which brought the buns ashore. This was a simple piece of behaviour, but it has the smack of intelligence—of putting two and two together in a novel way. It suggests the power of making what is called a "perceptual inference."
On the occasion of a great flood in a meadow it was observed that a number of mares brought their foals to the top of a knoll, and stood round about them protecting them against the rising water. A dog has been known to show what was at any rate a plastic appreciation of a varying situation in swimming across a tidal river. It changed its starting-point, they say, according to the flow or ebb of the tide. Arctic foxes and some other wild mammals show great cleverness in dealing with traps, and the manipulative intelligence of elephants is worthy of all our admiration.
Sec. 7
Why is there not more Intelligence?
When we allow for dexterity and power of association, when we recognise a certain amount of instinctive capacity and a capacity for profiting by experience in an intelligent way, we must admit a certain degree of disappointment when we take a survey of the behaviour of mammals, especially of those with very fine brains, from which we should naturally expect great things. Why is there not more frequent exhibition of intelligence in the stricter sense?
The answer is that most mammals have become in the course of time very well adapted to the ordinary conditions of their life, and tend to leave well alone. They have got their repertory of efficient answers to the ordinary questions of everyday life, and why should they experiment? In the course of the struggle for existence what has been established is efficiency in normal circumstances, and therefore even the higher animals tend to be no cleverer than is necessary. So while many mammals are extraordinarily efficient, they tend to be a little dull. Their mental equipment is adequate for the everyday conditions of their life, but it is not on sufficiently generous lines to admit of, let us say, an interest in Nature or adventurous experiment. Mammals always tend to "play for safety."
We hasten, however, to insert here some very interesting saving clauses.
Experimentation in Play
A glimpse of what mammals are capable of, were it necessary, may be obtained by watching those that are playful, such as lambs and kids, foals and calves, young foxes and others. For these young creatures let themselves go irresponsibly, they are still unstereotyped, they test what they and their fellows can do. The experimental character of much of animal play is very marked.
It is now recognised by biologists that play among animals is the young form of work, and that the playing period, often so conspicuous, is vitally important as an apprenticeship to the serious business of life and as an opportunity for learning the alphabet of Nature. But the playing period is much more; it is one of the few opportunities animals have of making experiments without too serious responsibilities. Play is Nature's device for allowing elbow-room for new departures (behaviour-variations) which may form part of the raw materials of progress. Play, we repeat, gives us a glimpse of the possibilities of the mammal mind.
Other Glimpses of Intelligence
A squirrel is just as clever as it needs to be and no more; and of some vanishing mammals, like the beaver, not even this can be said. Humdrum non-plastic efficiency is apt to mean stagnation. Now we have just seen that in the play of young mammals there is an indication of unexhausted possibilities, and we get the same impression when we think of three other facts. (a) In those mammals, like dog and horse, which have entered into active cooperative relations with man, we see that the mind of the mammal is capable of much more than the average would lead us to think. When man's sheltering is too complete and the domesticated creature is passive in his grip, the intelligence deteriorates. (b) When we study mammals, like the otter, which live a versatile life in a very complex and difficult environment, we get an inspiriting picture of the play of wits. (c) Thirdly, when we pass to monkeys, where the fore-limb has become a free hand, where the brain shows a relatively great improvement, where "words" are much used, we cannot fail to recognise the emergence of something new—a restless inquisitiveness, a desire to investigate the world, an unsatisfied tendency to experiment. We are approaching the Dawn of Reason.
THE MIND OF MONKEYS
Sec. 8
There is a long gamut between the bushy-tailed, almost squirrel-like marmosets and the big-brained chimpanzee. There is great variety of attainment at different levels in the Simian tribe.
Keen Senses
To begin at the beginning, it is certain that monkeys have a first-class sensory equipment, especially as regards sight, hearing, and touch. The axes of the two eyes are directed forwards as in man, and a large section of the field of vision is common to both eyes. In other words, monkeys have a more complete stereoscopic vision than the rest of the mammals enjoy. They look more and smell less. They can distinguish different colours, apart from different degrees of brightness in the coloured objects. They are quick to discriminate differences in the shapes of things, e.g. boxes similar in size but different in shape, for if the prize is always put in a box of the same shape they soon learn (by association) to select the profitable one. They learn to discriminate cards with short words or with signs printed on them, coming down when the "Yes" card is shown, remaining on their perch when the card says "No." Bred to a forest life where alertness is a life-or-death quality, they are quick to respond to a sudden movement or to pick out some new feature in their surroundings. And what is true of vision holds also for hearing.
Power of Manipulation
Another quality which separates monkeys very markedly from ordinary mammals is their manipulative expertness, the co-ordination of hand and eye. This great gift follows from the fact that among monkeys the fore-leg has been emancipated. It has ceased to be indispensable as an organ of support; it has become a climbing, grasping, lifting, handling organ. The fore-limb has become a free hand, and everyone who knows monkeys at all is aware of the zest with which they use their tool. They enjoy pulling things to pieces—a kind of dissection—or screwing the handle off a brush and screwing it on again.
[Illustration: 1. CHIMPANZEE
2. BABY ORANG-UTAN
3. ORANG-UTAN
4. BABY CHIMPANZEES
Photos: James's Press Agency.
In his famous book on The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) Charles Darwin showed that many forms of facial expression familiar in man have their counterparts in apes and other mammals. He also showed how important the movements of expression are as means of communication between mother and offspring, mate and mate, kith and kin.
The anthropoid apes show notable differences of temperament as the photographs show. The chimpanzee is lively, cheerful, and educable. The orang is also mild of temper, but often and naturally appears melancholy in captivity. This is not suggested, however, by our photograph of the adult. Both chimpanzee and orang are markedly contrasted with the fierce and gloomy gorilla.]
Activity for Activity's Sake
Professor Thorndike hits the nail on the head when he lays stress on the intensity of activity in monkeys—activity both of body and mind. They are pent-up reservoirs of energy, which almost any influence will tap. Watch a cat or a dog, Professor Thorndike says; it does comparatively few things and is content for long periods to do nothing. It will be splendidly active in response to some stimulus such as food or a friend or a fight, but if nothing appeals to its special make-up, which is very utilitarian in its interests, it will do nothing. "Watch a monkey and you cannot enumerate the things he does, cannot discover the stimuli to which he reacts, cannot conceive the raison d'etre of his pursuits. Everything appeals to him. He likes to be active for the sake of activity."
This applies to mental activity as well, and the quality is one of extraordinary interest, for it shows the experimenting mood at a higher turn of the spiral than in any other creature, save man. It points forward to the scientific spirit. We cannot, indeed, believe in the sudden beginning of any quality, and we recall the experimenting of playing mammals, such as kids and kittens, or of inquisitive adults like Kipling's mongoose, Riki-Tiki-Tavi, which made it his business in life to find out about things. But in monkeys the habit of restless experimenting rises to a higher pitch. They appear to be curious about the world. The psychologist whom we have quoted tells of a monkey which happened to hit a projecting wire so as to make it vibrate. He went on repeating the performance hundreds of times during the next few days. Of course, he got nothing out of it, save fun, but it was grist to his mental mill. "The fact of mental life is to monkeys it own reward." The monkey's brain is "tender all over, functioning throughout, set off in action by anything and everything."
Sheer Quickness
Correlated with the quality of restless inquisitiveness and delight in activity for its own sake there is the quality of quickness. We mean not merely the locomotor agility that marks most monkeys, but quickness of perception and plan. It is the sort of quality that life among the branches will engender, where it is so often a case of neck or nothing. It is the quality which we describe as being on the spot, though the phrase has slipped from its original moorings. Speaking of his Bonnet Monkey, an Indian macaque, second cousin to the kind that lives on the Rock of Gibraltar, Professor S. J. Holmes writes: "For keenness of perception, rapidity of action, facility in forming good practical judgments about ways and means of escaping pursuit and of attaining various other ends, Lizzie had few rivals in the animal world.... Her perceptions and decisions were so much more rapid than my own that she would frequently transfer her attention, decide upon a line of action, and carry it into effect before I was aware of what she was about. Until I came to guard against her nimble and unexpected manoeuvres, she succeeded in getting possession of many apples and peanuts which I had not intended to give her except upon the successful performance of some task."
Quick to Learn
Quite fundamental to any understanding of animal behaviour is the distinction so clearly drawn by Sir Ray Lankester between the "little-brain" type, rich in inborn or instinctive capacities, but relatively slow to learn, and the "big-brain" type, with a relatively poor endowment of specialised instincts, but with great educability. The "little-brain" type finds its climax in ants and bees; the "big-brain" type in horses and dogs, elephants and monkeys. And of all animals monkeys are the quickest to learn, if we use the word "learn" to mean the formation of useful associations between this and that, between a given sense-presentation and a particular piece of behaviour.
The Case of Sally
Some of us remember Sally, the chimpanzee at the "Zoo" with which Dr. Romanes used to experiment. She was taught to give her teacher the number of straws he asked for, and she soon learned to do so up to five. If she handed a number not asked for, her offer was refused; if she gave the proper number, she got a piece of fruit. If she was asked for five straws, she picked them up individually and placed them in her mouth, and when she had gathered five she presented them together in her hand. Attempts to teach her to give six to ten straws were not very successful. For Sally "above six" meant "many," and besides, her limits of patience were probably less than her range of computation. This was hinted at by the highly interesting circumstance that when dealing with numbers above five she very frequently doubled over a straw so as to make it present two ends and thus appear as two straws. The doubling of the straw looked like an intelligent device to save time, and it was persistently resorted to in spite of the fact that her teacher always refused to accept a doubled straw as equivalent to two straws. Here we get a glimpse of something beyond the mere association of a sound—"Five"—and that number of straws.
The Case of Lizzie
The front of the cage in which Professor Holmes kept Lizzie was made of vertical bars which allowed her to reach out with her arm. On a board with an upright nail as handle, there was placed an apple—out of Lizzie's reach. She reached immediately for the nail, pulled the board in and got the apple. "There was no employment of the method of trial and error; there was direct appropriate action following the perception of her relation to board, nail, and apple." Of course her ancestors may have been adepts at drawing a fruit-laden branch within their reach, but the simple experiment was very instructive. All the more instructive because in many other cases the experiments indicate a gradual sifting out of useless movements and an eventful retention of the one that pays. When Lizzie was given a vaseline bottle containing a peanut and closed with a cork, she at once pulled the cork out with her teeth, obeying the instinct to bite at new objects, but she never learned to turn the bottle upside down and let the nut drop out. She often got the nut, and after some education she got it more quickly than she did at first, but there was no indication that she ever perceived the fit and proper way of getting what she wanted. "In the course of her intent efforts her mind seemed so absorbed with the object of desire that it was never focussed on the means of attaining that object. There was no deliberation, and no discrimination between the important and the unimportant elements in her behaviour. The gradually increasing facility of her performances depended on the apparently unconscious elimination of useless movements." This may be called learning, but it is learning at a very low level; it is far from learning by ideas; it is hardly even learning by experiment; it is not more than learning by experience, it is not more than fumbling at learning!
Trial and Error
A higher note is struck in the behaviour of some more highly endowed monkeys. In many experiments, chiefly in the way of getting into boxes difficult to open, there is evidence (1) of attentive persistent experiment (2) of the rapid elimination of ineffective movements, and (3) of remembering the solution when it was discovered. Kinnaman taught two macaques the Hampton Court Maze, a feat which probably means a memory of movements, and we get an interesting glimpse in his observation that they began to smack their lips audibly when they reached the latter part of their course, and began to feel, dare one say, "We are right this time."
In getting into "puzzle-boxes" and into "combination-boxes" (where the barriers must be overcome in a definite order), monkeys learn by the trial and error method much more quickly than cats and dogs do, and a very suggestive fact emphasized by Professor Thorndike is "a process of sudden acquisition by a rapid, often apparently instantaneous abandonment of the unsuccessful movements and selection of the appropriate one, which rivals in suddenness the selections made by human beings in similar performances." A higher note still was sounded by one of Thorndike's monkeys which opened a puzzle-box at once, eight months after his previous experience with it. For here was some sort of registration of a solution.
Imitation
Two chimpanzees in the Dublin Zoo were often to be seen washing the two shelves of their cupboard and "wringing" the wet cloth in the approved fashion. It was like a caricature of a washerwoman, and someone said, "What mimics they are!" Now we do not know whether that was or was not the case with the chimpanzees, but the majority of the experiments that have been made do not lead us to attach to imitation so much importance as is usually given to it by the popular interpreter. There are instances where a monkey that had given up a puzzle in despair returned to it when it had seen its neighbour succeed, but most of the experiments suggested that the creature has to find out for itself. Even with such a simple problem as drawing food near with a stick, it often seems of little use to show the monkey how it is done. Placing a bit of food outside his monkey's cage, Professor Holmes "poked it about with the stick so as to give her a suggestion of how the stick might be employed to move the food within reach, but although the act was repeated many times Lizzie never showed the least inclination to use the stick to her advantage." Perhaps the idea of a "tool" is beyond the Bonnet Monkey, yet here again we must be cautious, for Professor L. T. Hobhouse had a monkey of the same macaque genus which learned in the course of time to use a crooked stick with great effect. |
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