WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



guage and accent of the Scotch sailors; and again 

 picked out from among many others the right collier 

 in which to finish the journey, partly by remem- 

 brance of the rig, but also by recognizing the still 

 more familiar and homelike dialect of the Dundee 

 men. In a country where dialects are so marked 

 as in Great Britain, this sort of observation would 

 no doubt be a great help to an intelligent animal. 

 Take the case of the Holywell workman's dog. It 

 is quite possible that he discovered the right route 

 from Liverpool, whither it would not be so difficult 

 to make his way from Manchester, by following 

 some rough-tongued Welshmen until he found 

 himself among his own hills again. 



But there is still more to be said about this part 

 of a homesick animal's resources and ingenuity. 

 I am firm in my belief that animals have a language 

 of signs and utterances by which they communi- 

 cate with each other, and that their vocabulary, 

 so to speak, is much larger than it has generally 

 been considered to be. Dupont de Nemours de- 

 clared that he understood fourteen words of the 

 cat tongue. I am perfectly convinced that those 

 two wicked little mules of ours, which ran away so 

 disgracefully from our camp in Wyoming, had 

 planned the whole thing out beforehand, and thus 



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