d
Letters," III., page 225, and the whole in the "Life and Letters of G.J.
Romanes," page 74. The lecture referred to was on animal intelligence,
and was given at the Dublin meeting of the British Association.)

...The sole fault which I find with your lecture is that it is too
short, and this is a rare fault. It strikes me as admirably clear and
interesting. I meant to have remonstrated that you had not discussed
sufficiently the necessity of signs for the formation of abstract ideas
of any complexity, and then I came on the discussion on deaf mutes. This
latter seems to me one of the richest of all the mines, and is worth
working carefully for years, and very deeply. I should like to read
whole chapters on this one head, and others on the minds of the higher
idiots. Nothing can be better, as it seems to me, than your several
lines or sources of evidence, and the manner in which you have arranged
the whole subject. Your book will assuredly be worth years of hard
labour; and stick to your subject. By the way, I was pleased at your
discussing the selection of varying instincts or mental tendencies;
for I have often been disappointed by no one having ever noticed this
notion.

I have just finished "La Psychologie, son Present et son Avenir,"
1876, by Delboeuf (a mathematician and physicist of Belgium) in about a
hundred pages. It has interested me a good deal, but why I hardly know;
it is rather like Herbert Spencer. If you do not know it, and would care
to see it, send me a postcard.

Thank Heaven, we return home on Thursday, and I shall be able to go on
with my humdrum work, and that makes me forget my daily discomfort.

Have you ever thought of keeping a young monkey, so as to observe its
mind? At a house where we have been staying there were Sir A. and Lady
Hobhouse, not long ago returned from India, and she and he kept [a]
young monkey and told me some curious particulars. One was that her
monkey was very fond of looking through her eyeglass at objects, and
moved the glass nearer and further so as to vary the focus. This struck
me, as Frank's son, nearly two years old (and we think much of his
intellect!!) is very fond of looking through my pocket lens, and I have
quite in vain endeavoured to teach him not to put the glass close down
on the object, but he always will do so. Therefore I conclude that a
child under two years is inferior in intellect to a monkey.

Once again I heartily congratulate you on your well