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.
When nineteen years old, young Sternberg began his medical studies with Dr. Horace Lathrop, in Cooperstown, N. Y. Afterward he attended the courses of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, and was graduated thence in the class of 1860. Before he had fairly settled in practice the civil war began, and the
