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BlisnllnErnng Untira 



Anecdote of a Dog. — I had a hen sitting on some Ducks' eggs; when 

 she hatched; she did not seem to like the appearance of the new-comers 

 at all; to use the servant's language she "could not abearthem;" so they 

 were taken from her, and put into a basket, and fed and attended to 

 for a time in the kitchen. There a little dog, a sort of half-bred Skye 

 terrier, followed them and laid down close to the basket; after awhile 

 she got into it, and curling herself round, took as much care of the Ducks 

 as she could; taking them up from time to time in her mouth, very 

 gently, and putting them into their right places, but they were very 

 restless and intractable, crawling through her long hair and over her back 

 in all directions; we therefore took them from her. It is more curious 

 from her not having had any puppies for two or three years, and she 

 is an inveterate vermin hunter, and at first we feared that she meant to 

 kill the Ducks, mistaking their piping for vermin. — H. 



Instinct of Animals. — In the July No. of "The Naturalist," in the 

 '^Chapter on Instinct," reference is made to the instinct of the Dog. I 

 riend the following which occurred to myself as corroborative of the above. 

 I was walking, some weeks ago, in a neighbouring town with a friend, 

 who was accompanied by a small half-bred Italian greyhound. As we 

 approached a large factory the dog all at once started off at a tangent, 

 running through a gentleman's grounds and meeting us again at some 

 distant point, I remarked upon the conduct of his dog to my friend, who 

 told me that the dog generally did so if he were walking with it at the 

 time the factory hands were coming out, as was the case in this instance. 

 He said the "hands" had jeered and laughed at the little dog sometimes, 

 and since then it always made a bend out of the main street in order to 

 avoid meeting thera. Surely here was an instinct approaching to reason. 

 We wei*e not near the mill at the time, but a street from it; but the 

 doo' evidently remembered the circumstance of the mill hands laughing at 

 him, and therefore to avoid the like occurrence, acted in the manner I 

 have described. 



To the above I will also add a similar case of instinct on the part of 

 a cat belonging to myself. On July 19th., we had shut the horjse up, 

 all being out for a time, leaving only a small window open for Mr, Tom 

 to enter or not as he pleased, x\bout eight in the evening I was coming 

 home through the fields adjoining my garden, when whom should I meet 

 but puss himself, who thereupon began to mew and run before me, evidently 

 expecting me to follow. In fact it was just the time when he had his 

 allowance of new milk, and no one being at home he had come into the 

 fields, not indeed expecting to see me, but because the servant had beeo 



