448 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 



highest level of intelligence to which the animal under 

 consideration can certainly be said to attain. But in 

 order that any who read these pages for the sake of the 

 anecdotes which they necessarily present may not be 

 disappointed by meeting with cases already known to 

 them, I shall draw my material mainly from the facts 

 communicated to me by private correspondents, alluding 

 to previously published facts only as supplementary to 

 those now published for the first time. It may be well 

 to explain to my numerous correspondents that I select 

 the following cases for quoting, not because they are the 

 most sensational that I have received, but rather because 

 they either contain nothing sufficiently exceptional to 

 excite the criticism of incredulity, or because they happen 

 to have been corroborated by the more or less similar 

 cases which I quote from other correspondents. 



As showing the high general intelligence of the dog, 

 I shall first begin with the collie. It is certain that many 

 of these dogs can be trusted to gather and drive sheep 

 without supervision. It is enough on this head to refer 

 to the well-known anecdotes of the poet Hogg in his 

 ' Shepherd's Calendar,' concerning his dog ' Sirrah.' 



^'illiams, in his book on ' Dogs and their Ways,' says 

 (p. 124) that a friend of his had a collie which, whenever 

 his master said the words ' Cast, cast,' would run off to 

 seek any sheep that might be cast, and on finding it would 

 at once assist it to rise. He also knew of another dog 

 (p. 102), which would perform the same office even in the 

 absence of his master, going the round of the fields and 

 pastures by himself to right all the sheep that he found 

 to be cast. 1 



One of my correspondents (Mr. Laurie Gentles) sends 

 me an account of a sheep-dog belonging to a friend of his 

 (Mr. Mitchell, of Inverness-shire) which strayed to a neigh- 

 bouring farm, and took up his residence with the farmer. 

 On the second night after the dog arrived at the farm 

 the farmer ' took the dog down to the meadow to see if 

 the cattle were all right. To his dismay he found that 



1 For many other instances of sheep-dog sagacity, see Watson, 

 Reasoning P,irver of Animals, under ' Shepherd's Dog.' 



