290 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



keep them there till they were quite large, if it were not to 

 prevent their being dealt by as other kittens had been ? Call 

 that instinct, if you please. That was present ; but were there 

 not manifest, also, both reason and will ? Another, the prop- 

 erty of my nearest neighbor, found a comfortable home with 

 us from winter to winter, while, her house being closed, the 

 good lady was making her annual visit with her friends in 

 Boston. After a year or two, "black-nose," who was in the 

 interim neighborly, became, in some way, so cognizant of 

 the near approach of the time at which her mistress was to 

 leave, that she would come of her own accord and take up 

 her abode with us a little in advance of the event. Were 

 there not in the act, evidences of a retentive memory, and of 

 keen powers of observation ? 



The late Hon. Thomas Bradley, of Vineyard Haven, was 

 aroused from his slumbers in the night, by the intense scratch- 

 ing and other boisterous noises of his cat at his lodging-room 

 door. At first he did not heed it, but the persistent noise of 

 the cat induced him to arise and open the door, when he was 

 met by a volume of smoke. He rushed down stairs and 

 found the woodwork in his sitting-room ablaze. He was just 

 in time to save his house from entire conflagration. What 

 intelligence less than human prompted that act in the cat? 



But of all animals, perhaps there is none which illustrates 

 our position so well as the dog. The other domestic animals 

 named evidently understand many of our words, having 

 learned to understand them. This animal would seem to be 

 more intelligent and more tractable than they. A highly 

 respectable gentleman, who lived near me, now deceased, had 

 some years since a dog which he had petted and set by, but 

 which had become old and undesirable in the house, and he 

 said to his family one day in the hearing of the animal, "I 

 shall have to get some one to shoot this dog." "Bose" 

 immediately went out of the house, and never returned. Did 

 not that dog understand the full import of the words of his 

 master, and did he not reason, and base his conduct upon 

 that understanding and that process of reasoning, with a view 

 to the saving of his own life? Another man, my neighbor, 

 from whom I have the story direct, living in town, and 

 owning a wood-lot near, was accustomed to cut the wood in 



