Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1899: Volume LVI, No. 1Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1899: Volume LVI, No. 1
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
From what I have written it will be seen that I have had unusual
facilities for studying the habits and possibilities of dogs. I was
not under the necessity of gathering up a lot of mongrels at random
in the streets, and then, in order to see instances of their sagacity
and the exercise of their highest reasoning powers, to keep them until
they were "practically utterly hungry," and then imprison them in a
box a good deal less than four feet square, and then say to them, "Now,
you poor, frightened, half-starved creatures, show us what reasoning
powers you possess." About as well throw some benighted Africans into
a slave ship and order them to make a telephone or a phonograph! My
comparison is not too strong, considering the immense distance there is
between the human race and the brute creation. And so it must be, in
the bringing to light of the powers of memory and the clear exhibition
of the reasoning powers, few though they be, that the tests are not
conclusive unless made under the most favorable environment, upon dogs
of the highest intelligence, and in the most congenial and sympathetic
manner.
Testing this most interesting question in this manner, my decided
convictions are that animals do reason.
SKETCH OF GEORGE M. STERNBERG.
No man among Americans has studied the micro-organisms with more profit
or has contributed more to our knowledge of the nature of infection,
particularly of that of yellow fever, than Dr. GEORGE M. STERNBERG, of
the United States Army. His merits are freely recognized abroad, and
he ranks there, as well as at home, among the leading bacteriologists
of the age. He was born at Hartwick Seminary, an institution of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (General Synod), Otsego, N. Y.,
June 8, 1838. His father, the Rev. Levi Sternberg, D. D., a graduate of
Union College, a Lutheran minister, and for many years principal of the
seminary and a director of it, was descended from German ancestors who
came to this country in 1703 and settled in Schoharie County, New York.
The younger Sternberg received his academical training at the seminary,
after which, intending to study medicine, he undertook a school at New
Germantown, N. J., as a means of earning a part of the money required
to defray the cost of his instruction in that science. The record of
his school was one of quiet sessions, thoroughness, and popularity of
the teacher, and his departure was an occasion of regret among his
patrons.
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