Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1892 — INTELLIGENCE OR REASON. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

INTELLIGENCE OR REASON.

The Remarkable Care of Anlmala for Their Yeung. If the bushmen of Australis or the dwarf tribes of Africa or the dwellers of many other regions or the earth were gifted with the Instinct of many of our quadruped animals they would be raised to a much higher order of intelligence in the opinion of ethnologists. Nohow do tbe ‘ lower animals more approach the human standard than in the care of their offspring. Often do we And acts of maternal or parental devotion curiously allied to those of man. The American Indian, whose slave-wife straps her little one on her back, is no more careful for the welfare of her offspring than many species of ants and spiders and marsupial animals, and we feel that any of these mere animals are superior to human tribes who deform their sons and daughters in order that they conform to savage ideas. And yet we term human actions of

any kind the performance of intelligent beings, while all merely animal actions are only instinctive. Among insects in the East is a spider that envelops her eggs in an oval balloon, to which a silken rope is attached and made last to a leaf or twig and floats securely in the air, defying its enemies. In many other families of insects the same care is noted. The female mole-cricket forms her nest, in which 150 eggs are inclosed, and after carefully closing it up on every side surrounds it with intrenchments and fortifications. At the approach of winter the nest is sunk deeper in the ground and again on approaching heat is carried toward the surface, thereby gaining for the brood the genial influence of the sun. Ants are proverbially noted for their solicitude for the young. In Africa naturalists have found nests fifteen or twenty feet high and covering an area of tweDty-flve square feet. Their one care seems to be the preservation of the young and they carry out their domestic arrangements with as much care, if not more regularity and harmony, as the bee. The queen ant, which has a large retinue of attendants, lays 80,000 eggs a day and these are borne to the nurseries, many feet distant, where they are hatched and fostered until able to join their respective ranks in ar>t life. The custom of carrying the young upon the back is noted among a large variety of animals. The opossum is as remarkable as any of these. At first the young are retained in the pouch, presenting a curious spectacle with their white heads and bead-like eyes peeping from the singular nursery. When not alarmed they appear on their mother's back, their tails stoutly wound round/ hers, which is raised for the purpose. The kangaroo, a marsupial animal, offers a queer study. Their young are incomplete when born, and are placed in a pouch by the mother, where they remain until developed. Even after development they return to the pouch in times of danger. The deer-mouse, one of our smaller animals, carries

its young clinging to its under side. Among domestic animals the cat is a familiar example of the devotion of the mother to her young. How many times have we seen puss carry her young in her mouth, actuated by an imaginary or a real danger menacing her innocent-looking kittens. The common snipe displays marked intelligence. When her nest is approached she feigns lameness, and hops off clumsily in an opposite direction until the nest is far behind; then she takes wing and flies away, to regain the nest by a roundabout way. It is a strange kind of instinct which causes certain insects, whose young depend upon the hives of honey bees in which to pass a period of their existence, to deposit their

eggs upon certain flowers, so that the young larva mav clas i the visiting bee and thus be transportec to its •tore house. Whether it be called intelligence ]

or reason, certain it is that the great Artificer has endowed animals with a capability of perpetuating theU species. It is an argument against the sophistry that would attribute the action and co-ordination of things terrestrial to chance.

HOW THE KANGAROO CARES FOR ITS YOUNG.

THE DEER-MOUSE ESCAPING WITH ITS BROOD.

THE OPOSSUM CARRYING ITS BROOD.