Yet the analogy only half holds. Memories of the most tenacious kind
the animals surely have; but little or no voluntary, unaided power to
use them. Memory is largely a mechanical, a crank process with the
animals, a kind of magic-lantern show, where the concrete slide is
necessary for the picture on the screen; else the past as the future
hangs a blank. The dog will sometimes seem to cherish a grudge; so
will the elephant. Some one injures or wrongs him, and the huge beast
harbors the memory, broods it, and waits his opportunity for revenge.
Yet the records of these cases usually show the creature to be living
with the object of his hatred--keeper or animal--and that his memory
goes no further back than the present moment, than the sight of the
enemy; memory always taking an immediate, concrete shape.
At my railroad station I frequently see a yoke of great sleepy,
bald-faced oxen, that look as much alike as two blackbirds. Their
driver knows them apart; but as they stand there bound to one another
by the heavy bar across their foreheads, it would puzzle anybody else
to tell Buck from Berry. But not if he approach them wearing an
overcoat. At sight of me in an overcoat the off ox will snort and back
and thresh about in terror, twisting the head of his yoke-fellow,
nearly breaking his neck, and trampling him miserably. But the nigh ox
is used to it. He chews and blinks away placidly, keeps his feet the
best he can, and doesn’t try to understand at all why great-coats
should so frighten his cud-chewing brother. I will drop off my coat
and go up immediately to smooth the muzzles of both oxen, blinking
sleepily while the lumber is being loaded on.
Years ago, the driver told me, the off ox was badly frightened by a
big woolly coat, the sight or smell of which suggested to the creature
some natural enemy, a panther, perhaps, or a bear. The memory
remained, but beyond recall except in the presence of its first cause,
the great-coat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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