A CHAPTER ON DOGS. 



Spanish writer quoted by Lord Brougham, saji-s that a friend was wont when he called to 

 leave his mastiff at the door of the house, and the animal, in imitation of his master, pull- 

 ed the bell in order to get in. The dog of a shop-keeper, who ran in and out of the street- 

 door during the week, had always recourse to the knocker on Sunday when it was shut. 

 Priscilla Wakefield, who tells this anecdote, adds two or three more of the same nature. 

 M. Blaze knew a dog whose habit was, not to ring the bell, but to answer it. He regular- 

 ly followed the servant from the kitchen to the door, and the visitor from the door to the 

 parlor. In his old age, becoming too deaf to hear the sound, he took up his quaters where 

 he could see the bell, that by watching its motion he might continue to know when any- 

 body called. 



The dog possesses the to us incomprehensible instinct — in common, however, with other 

 animals, — of finding his way by a road that he has never traversed. Mr. Blain tells of a 

 dog that was sent by sea from London to Scotland, and escaped back to the metropolis by 

 land. Boisrot de Lacour, a French writer on the chase, took a terrier from Rochefort to 

 Paris, and though the dog made the journey in a carriage, and slept all the way, he re- 

 turned when he was liberated, to his former master. Once again he borrowed a hound of 

 a brother sportsman, who resided at a considerable distance; the next day, when he was 

 let out to hunt, he slipped away and ran off home, not, as was discovered, by the road he 

 had been brought, but in a straight line across flood and field. M. Blaze calls this in- 

 stinct a sixth sense, of which we can frame no sort of idea. 'Experience, however,' he 

 continues, 'demonstrates that it exists. The camel conducts his master three hundred 

 leagues through the sands of the desert, where there is no track to guide him. The pigeon 

 carries letters through the patliless air. The birds of pa.'ssage born in Europe emigrate to 

 India; and, what is remarkable, travel ordinarily without their parents, who have made 

 the voyage before. The horse finds his road across the snow; and probably all animals 

 have the same faculty.' On the other hand, an extraordinar}'- circumstance, related by 

 Dupont de Nemours, in a memoir read before the French Institute, can only be attributed 

 to the effects of intelligence. The dog in question was the property of a shoe-black at 

 Paris, whose trade he sustained by dipping his paws into the mud and soiling the shoes 

 of the first person that passed along. If the pedestrian continued his progress, he dirti- 

 ed the next; if he stopped to have the mischief repaired, he remained quiet till his master 

 was at leisure for a fresh customer, and then the game recommenced. He was purchased 

 by an Englishman, enchanted by his cleverness, and taken to London. He contrived to 

 escape, went to the inn where the coach that brought him put up, folloAved it back to Dover, 

 and, after cro.ssing in a packet-boat to Calais, again placed himself in the wake of a car- 

 riage, which pioneered him to Paris. One habit of dogs, that of deserting a town an hour 

 or two before an earthquake, which is frequently ascribed to some strange and unaccoun- 

 table instinct, depends simply on their every-day perceptions. The rumbling sound strikes 

 their quick ears before it is heard by any one else, and scares them away. In our obser- 

 vation of the dog, we seldom attach sufficient importance to the fineness of his senses. 

 They are so acute that a sleeping dog knows whether he is touched by his master or a 

 stranger, remaining quiet in the first case, and growling in the last. 



Whatever opinion may be formed of the sagacity of the dog on particular points, it is 

 impossible to deny that he possesses faculties in addition to those which we ordinarily call 

 instinct. We have no intention at present to plunge into the thorny discussion of the pre- 

 cise extent of his intellectual powers; but we feel assured that no one can follow the dog 

 :h the several phases of history, and not acknowledge in the words of Gaston Phce- 

 hich M. Blaze has taken for his motto, ' That he is the most noble, most reasonable, 



