Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1875 — Instinct and Reason. [ARTICLE]

Instinct and Reason.

Mr. James Hutchings, writing from Bambury, England, to Nature, gives the following curious account of the doings of a cat: A .pair of blackbirds built a nest on the top of my garden wall, which is thickly covered with ivy and within three yards of the drawing-room window. When the young birds were about three parts fledged, one of them, by some mishap, left the nest and fell into the flow'er garden. My cat (seven years old, and which had killed scores of small birds) immediately found it, and at the same time a kitten (about three months old but not belonging to the cat) began to pay rather rude attentions to the young blackbird, and would have used it as kittens are wont, but the old cat would not suffer her to touch it. The cause of this was the old cock blackbird, being aware of the peril of its young, made a great noise and kept flying here and there around the scene of action, crying and scolding with might and main. It then became evident to me that the cat had two or three objects in view and a purpose to gain. Firstly, not to allow' the kitten to touch, or kill, or make off with the young bird. Secondly, to use the young bird as a decoy to entrap the old one. Thirdly, to make the young bird cry sufficiently from fear or pain to induce the parent’s affection to overcome its 'discretion. During the maneuvers old Tom repeatedly made unsuccessful springs to catch the cock bird, alternately running to give the kitten a lesson of patience or self-denial, or impose a , fear of v punishment. The ybung bird repeatedly hopped out of sight amongst the flowers and stinted its cries; then anon the cat touched it again and made it flutter about and cry again, which from time to time brought the old bird down with cries of terror or wrath Or a blending

of both emotions, and almost into the very mouth of the cat. Two or three times I thought old Tom was successful, but no, he missed his object most surprisingly. It became evident to me that the cat was using the young bird as a decoy to catch the old one. Alter I had watched some ten or fifteen minutes it became too painful for me to witness, so I caught the young bird and put it again into its nest, which was about ten feet from the ground. In less than an hour the young bird was again on the ground, the cat, kitten and parent bird performing the same drama, with this difference in the acting: the cat lay down, rolled about or sat at a convenient distance from the young bird, yet with eyes alert, though half shut and otherwise giving an assurance that he did not intend to make another bound without succeeding to "catch his prey. He was, however, disappointed and made four without achieving his purpose. At this juncture the mother-bird came on the stage with cries of distress but kept aloof on the branches of a tall cherry tree that rises above the wall; and if her boldness were less than the cock-bird’s her discretion was greater, for she kept far aloft. Once it seemed to me that the cock-bird actually struck the back or head of the cat with his wing and mandible. This scene continued about seven or ten minutes, when I again caught the young bird and threw it over the wall, and the exhibition of animal thought, emotion and passion ceased. Here were manifested phenomena of a more remarkable kind than those seen in the cases cited by the Duke of Argyll in the Contemporary Review for July, in an article to illustrate “ Animal Instinct in Relation to the Mind of Man,” for the cat showed an amount of reasoning which he probably never before exercised, because never before placed in the same circumstances. That he had used young sparrows, of which he must have caught scores, as decoys to catch the old ones is possible, but I am perfectly sure that no kitten ever was in the garden: during his reign as “ monarch of all he surveyed" in the shape of birds. Hence his authority over the kitten, which was full of life and eagerness to appropriate the young bird, the killing of which would have defeated the purpose of the cat in using the young bird as a decoy to catch the old one, was indeed remarkable, and disclosed a combination of mental forces of self-conscious reason of no trifling order, and, as it appears to me, conclusive that the difference —and only difference—between instinct and reason is one of degree.