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Works on animal intelligence, such as Romanes's, abound in incidents that show in the animals reason and forethought in their simpler forms; but in many cases the incidents related in these works are not well authenticated, nor told by trained observers. The observations of the great majority of people have no scientific value whatever.
According to Samuel W. Baker, elephants combine in larger groups than the "compound family." Romanes's Animal Intelligence, p. 472. Brehm, i. 82; Darwin's Descent of Man, ch. iii. The Kozloff expedition of 1899-1901 have also had to sustain in Northern Thibet a similar fight. Society has not been created by man; it is anterior to man.
I leave to others to survey the broad question of whether or not it will be well for the community that the mass of women should have a collegiate training. It is a wide and wrathful question, and has of late been very well discussed in Romanes's paper, and by Mrs. Lynn Linton.
Such a book as Romanes's "Animal Intelligence" is not always a safe guide. It is like a lawyer's plea to the jury for his client. Romanes was so intent upon making out his case that he allowed himself to be imposed upon by the tales of irresponsible observers. Many of his stories of the intelligence of birds and beasts are antecedently improbable.
If I nevertheless make a special mention of Kessler's address, it is because he raised mutual aid to the height of a law much more important in evolution than the law of mutual struggle. G. Romanes's capital work, Animal Intelligence, was issued in 1882, and followed next year by the Mental Evolution in Animals.
Huxley's Writings, passim. Haeckel's "Natural History of Creation." Weismann's "Studies in the Theory of Descent" and subsequent papers. Romanes's "Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution." Lankester's "Degeneration." Fiske's "Darwinism and Other Essays." For adverse criticism of Darwin, read Mivart's "Genesis of Species," and the Duke of Argyll's "Unity of Nature."
About the same time , Buchner published another work, Liebe und Liebes-Leben in der Thierwelt, a second edition of which was issued in 1885. The idea, as seen, was in the air. Petersburg Society of Naturalists, vol. xi. 1880. George J. Romanes's Animal Intelligence, 1st ed. p. 233.
For their hunting associations see Sir E. Tennant's Natural History of Ceylon, quoted in Romanes's Animal Intelligence, p. 432. See Emil Huter's letter in L. Buchner's Liebe. With regard to the viscacha it is very interesting to note that these highly-sociable little animals not only live peaceably together in each village, but that whole villages visit each other at nights.
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