THE ASS. l8l 



could hardly suppose he could have drawn the bolts and 

 let himself in, especially as the upper bolt was fixed at a 

 considerable height. This, however, proved to have been the 

 case ; for my bedroom overlooking the yard and garden, I 

 one night watched at the window, and distinctly saw master 

 donkey, reared on his hind legs, unfastening the upper bolt 

 with his nose or mouth. He then withdrew the lower one, 

 lifted the latch, and walked quietly into the garden. In a 

 few minutes I further observed him returning to his shed with 

 a large bunch of carrots, which he deposited in his shed, and 

 then went back not, certainly, to bolt, but to latch the 

 door; after which he leisurely set about munching his slily 

 acquired booty. Before putting a final stop to these proceed- 

 ings, I gave several of my neighbours, who were incredulous 

 upon the subject, an opportunity of witnessing them. And 

 at these times his sagacity was further evinced by the fact 

 that he would never commence his operations until after the 

 light had been extinguished at the bedroom window." 

 The instinct The sense of locality so conspicuous in the 

 of the Ass. ( j O g j the cat and the horse is also possessed in 

 a remarkable degree by the ass, as the following story told 

 by Captain Brown will show. "In 1816, an ass belonging 

 to Captain Dundas was shipped on board the Ister, bound 

 from Gibraltar to Malta. The vessel struck on a sand-bank 

 off the Point de Gat, and the ass was thrown overboard into 

 a sea which was so stormy that a boat that soon after left 

 the ship was lost. In the course of a few days, when the 

 gates of Gibraltar were opened in the morning, the guard 

 was surprised by the same ass which had so recently been 

 removed, presenting itself for admittance. On entering, it 

 proceeded immediately to the stable which it had formerly 

 occupied, The ass had not only swum to the shore, but 

 found its own way from Point de Gat to Gibraltar, a distance 

 of more than two hundred miles, through a mountainous and 

 intricate country intersected by streams, which it had never 



