es.

Dr. C. J. Romanes tells of a female chimpanzee who was taught to count
straws up to five. She held the straws in her hand, exposing the ends to
the number requested. If she were asked for three, she held up three.
If she were asked for four, she held up four. All this is a mere matter
of training. But consider now, Mr. Burroughs, what follows. When she
was asked for five straws and she had only four, she doubled one straw,
exposing both its ends and thus making up the required number. She did
not do this only once, and by accident. She did it whenever more straws
were asked for than she possessed. Did she perform a distinctly
reasoning act? or was her action the result of blind, mechanical
instinct? If Mr. Burroughs cannot answer to his own satisfaction, he may
call Dr. Romanes a nature-faker and dismiss the incident from his mind.

The foregoing is a trick of erroneous human reasoning that works very
successfully in the United States these days. It is certainly a trick of
Mr. Burroughs, of which he is guilty with distressing frequency. When a
poor devil of a writer records what he has seen, and when what he has
seen does not agree with Mr. Burroughs's mediaeval theory, he calls said
writer a nature-faker. When a man like Mr. Hornaday comes along, Mr.
Burroughs works a variation of the trick on him. Mr. Hornaday has made a
close study of the orang in captivity and of the orang in its native
state. Also, he has studied closely many other of the higher animal
types. Also, in the tropics, he has studied the lower types of man. Mr.
Hornaday is a man of experience and reputation. When he was asked if
animals reasoned, out of all his knowledge on the subject he replied that
to ask him such a question was equivalent to asking him if fishes swim.
Now Mr. Burroughs has not had much experience in studying the lower human
types and the higher animal types. Living in a rural district in the
state of New York, and studying principally birds in that limited
habitat, he has been in contact neither with the higher animal types nor
the lower human types. But Mr. Hornaday's reply is such a facer to him
and his homocentric theory that he has to do something. And he does it.
He retorts: "I suspect that Mr. Hornaday is a better naturalist than he
is a comparative psychologist." Exit Mr. Hornaday. Who the devil is Mr.
Hornaday, anyway? The sage of Slabsides has spoken. When Darwin
concluded that animals were capa