206 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



custom. Being very fond of clogs, the Englishman resolved to pur- 

 chase this clever little fellow, and bring him back to England with 

 him. When, however, he went to the dog's master, that person at 

 first denied any connection with him, and only admitted the owner- 

 ship when he was perfectly satisfied that his interrogator had no con- 

 nection with the police. For some time also he refused to part with 

 the little poodle, saying that no money could pay him for the loss of 

 his dog, who really made his living for him. Tempted, however, by a 

 very high price, he at last consented to sell the dog; and the gentle- 

 man, a few days afterward, brought him over to England, traveling 

 via Boulogne to Folkstone. His residence in England was some thirty 

 or forty miles from Folkstone, and to this place he brought his little 

 purchase. He had not been many days in his new home, however, 

 when the little French poodle suddenly disappeared. Search was made 

 for him everywhere, but to no effect. His new master offered a re- 

 ward for him, but with the same result ; and he had at last made up 

 his mind that the little fellow had been either poisoned or stolen, when 

 one morning, about six weeks after his mysterious disappearance, the 

 gentleman received a letter from a friend in Paris telling him that his 

 dog was back again there, and at his old trade of soiling boots in the 

 interest of his former master. The little fellow, not liking the dullness 

 of a country life, had resolved to return to his former home, and had 

 made his way to Folkstone ; there, as the gentleman afterward ascer- 

 tained, he had got on board a steamer going to Boulogne, and from 

 Boulogne had found his way back to Paris. 



Of the foregoing three stories, the first two are probably even more 

 remarkable than the last. The last (except as to the dog's finding its 

 way back to Paris) illustrates only the possibility of developing in a 

 dog, by the training of its natural intelligence, an almost human in- 

 genuity. But it is by instilling into the dog the intelligence of a 

 higher being that this skill is engendered. The spring of the intelli- 

 gence is in the trainer, and it is to attain an object which the higher 

 being, and not the lower, has in view. But in the first two cases the 

 whole process is the dog's ; the object to be secured, namely, revenge, 

 is what the dog himself seeks, and the means by which that object is 

 to be attained are devised and carried out by the instinct of the dog. 

 That a dog should harbor revenge is, of course, not a very wonderful 

 fact ; but there is a calm reflection and a cool calculation displayed in 

 the first two cases above given, which make them somewhat peculiar. 

 If what we call instinct in these animals embi-aces powers so very like 

 reason ; if they are swayed by the same passions and affections which 

 move us, and they are able to communicate to their fellows the feel- 

 ings which stir them, and the external circumstances which bring those 

 feelings into play, the border-line between man's mental territory and 

 theirs becomes a little bit indefinite. Chambers's Journal. 



