We have, it is true more than
one collection of anecdotes in which the intelligence of animals
is lauded to the skies; but we cannot rely upon these
ill-authenticated stories. To find genuine and incontestable
instances we must have recourse to the works, rare as yet, of
scientific men who have made a special study of the subject. M.
Hachet-Souplet, for example, the director of the Institut de
Psychologie Zoologique, mentions the case of a dog who learnt to
acquire an abstract idea of weight. You put in front of him eight
rounded and polished stones, all of exactly the same size and
shape, but of different weights. You tell him to fetch the
heaviest or the lightest; he judges their weight by lifting them
and, without mistake, picks out the one required.
The same writer also tells the story of a parrot to whom he had
taught the word "cupboard" by showing him a little box that could
be hung up on the wall at different heights and in which his
daily allowance of food was always ostentatiously put away;
"I next taught him the names of a number of objects," says M.
Hachet-Souplet, "by holding them out to him. Among them was a
ladder; and I prevailed upon the bird to say, 'Climb,' each time
that he saw me mount the steps. One morning, when the parrot's
cage was brought into the laboratory, the cupboard was hanging
near the ceiling, while the little ladder was stowed away in a
corner among other objects familiar to the bird.
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