Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/552

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534
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

indicating that they were in danger, but not to the others. So wild dogs and howling dogs learn to bark after they become accustomed to hear their tamed companions bark. In view of the facility with which parrots learn to articulate words, it may be assuming too much to say, dogmatically, that animals can not be taught to speak. Instances are not wanting in which parrots have seemed able to speak intelligently. A very striking case of the kind is that of the parrot and the Duke of Nassau, cited by Locke in his Essay on the Human Understanding. Darwin mentioned a parrot that always said "Good morning" and "Good evening" correctly.

All these facts I have mentioned seem to me to demonstrate that the education of animals rests on the same basis as that of man; that in numerous species parents give their young a practical education, but of short duration; that an artificial education imposed by man is competent to divert and even metamorphose what are called the instinctive tendencies of animals, and give them new ones; and that repeated drilling of young animals, assisted on occasion by chastisement and recompense, is usually sufficient to obtain this result. It would be easy to show that human education does not proceed very differently, and that among inferior races it does not diverge greatly from that which many animals give their young.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue de l'École d'Anthropologie.

THE PRIMARY SOCIAL SETTLEMENT.

By KATE KINGSLEY IDE.

WITH the close of this century the "woman question," as such, will have practically settled itself in the United States, to the immense relief of a great number of people. In its wake have followed "child study," of special interest to kindergartners and mothers' clubs; paidology, the new science of the child, claiming the attention of college men and demanding a college chair; and oikology, a new name for the science of housekeeping or household economics. Oikology, from its Greek derivation, includes also family life or homekeeping, which has but recently appeared on the horizon of science and literature as worthy of particular study. It will not be in dim perspective much longer. The question of the family, of transcendent importance, is sure to come nearer and nearer, to grow larger and larger, and to demand the attention not only of economists and sociologists but of thoughtful men and women everywhere. The national "Congress of Mothers" will soon