DOG GENERAL INTELLIGENCE. 461 



going the intense excitement of the chase, deliberately trotted 

 by a short cut to a hollow oak trunk, and crouching at its 

 base calmly awaited the advent of the fleeing rabbit. And he 

 was not disappointed (they frequently escaped without being 

 reduced to this extremity), for the pursuing dogs pressed the 

 rabbit so hard that, after making a long detour, it made for the 

 place of refuge. As it was about entering the hollow trunk, 

 the crouching ' Bonus ' captured the astonished rodent. 



Similarly, Dr. Andrew Wilson, F.R.S.E., writes me as 

 follows : 



There is a shrubbery near the house, about 200 or 300 yards 

 long, and running in the shape of a horseshoe. A small terrier 

 used to start a rabbit nearly every morning, at the end of the 

 shrubbery next the house, and hunt him through the whole 

 length of it to the other end, where the rabbit escaped into an 

 old drain. The dog then appears to have come to the conclusion 

 that the chord of a circle is shorter than its arc, for he raised 

 the rabbit again, and instead of following him through the 

 shrubbery as usual, he took the short cut to the drain, and was 

 ready and in waiting on the rabbit when he arrived, and caught 

 him. 



A somewhat similar instance is communicated to me 

 by Mr. William Cairns, of Argyll House, N.B. : 



I was watching the operations of a little Skye terrier on a 

 wheatstack which was in the coui-se of being thrashed, when 

 suddenly a very large rat bounced off, just from under Fan's 

 nose. It darted into a pit of water about a dozen yards from 

 the stack, and tried to escape. Fan, however, plunged after, 

 and swam for some distance, but found she was being left be- 

 hind. So she turned to the shore again and ran round to 

 the other side of the pit, and was ready and caught it just on 

 landing. 



I never saw anything more remarkable. If it was not rea- 

 son, I do not know how it is possible that it could come much 

 more closely to the exercise of that faculty. 



Dr. Bannister, editor of the ' Journal of Nervous and 

 Mental Diseases,' writes me from Chicago, that having 

 spent a winter in Alaska, he ' had a good opportunity to 

 study animal intelligence in the Eskimo dogs,' and he 

 reports it as ' a fact of common occurrence,' when the 

 dogs are drawing sledges on the ice near the coast, that 



