A boy picks up a stone and throws it at a bird; he comes home and unlocks the garden-gate with a key; he enters his room, and removes the large "Liddell and Scott" which he uses as a convenient object to keep the lid of his play-box shut; he opens the box, and cuts himself a slice of cake with his pocket-knife. Then he goes to his tutor, who is teaching him about means and ends, and their relation to each other. He is told that the throwing of the stone was the means by which the death of the bird, or the end, was to be accomplished; that the use of the knife was the means by which the end in view, the severance of a piece of cake, was to be effected, and so on. He is led to see that the employment of a great many different things, differing in all sorts of ways--stones, keys, lexicons, and knives--may be classified together as means; and that a great many various effects, the death of a bird or the cutting a bit of cake, may be regarded as ends. He is told that when he thinks of the means and the ends together, as means and end, he will be thinking of their relationship. And it is explained to him that means and ends and their relationships are concepts, and involve the exercise of his reasoning powers. Weary and sick to death of concepts and relationships and reason, at length he escapes to the garden. Picking up a light stick, he sweeps off the heads of some peculiarly aggravating poppies, and determines to think no more of means and ends, continuing to use the stick meanwhile as a most appropriate means to the end of decapitating the poppies. By all which I mean to imply that there is a great difference between selecting and using a tool for an appropriate purpose, and possessing a conscious knowledge of the relation between the means employed and the ends attained. I do not think that any conception of means, or end, or relationship is possible to the brute. But I believe that the elephant can perceive that this stick will serve to remove that leech. And if this is what Mr. Romanes means by its possessing a conscious knowledge of the relation between the means employed and the ends attained, then I am, so far, at one with him in the interpretation of the facts, though I disagree with his mode of expressing them.