Appetence and Emotion. 407 



to one, he will often carry it away for a short distance ; and 

 then, squatting down with it on the ground close before 

 him, will wait until his master comes close to take it away. 

 The dog will seize it and rush away in triumph, repeating 

 the same manoeuvre, and evidently enjoying the practical 

 joke." Mr. Romanes had a dog who used to perform 

 certain self-taught tricks, "which clearly had the object 

 of exciting laughter. For instance, while lying on his side 

 and violently grinning, he would hold one leg in his mouth. 

 Under such circumstances, nothing pleased him so much 

 as having his joke duly appreciated, while, if no notice was 

 taken of him, he would become sulky." To these I may 

 add an observation of my own. I used sometimes, when 

 staying at Lancaster with a friend, to take his dog Sambo, 

 a highly intelligent retriever, to the seashore. His chief 

 delight there was to bury small crabs in the sand, and then 

 stand watching till a leg or a claw appeared above the 

 surface, upon which he would race backwards and forwards, 

 giving short barks of keen enjoyment. This I saw him do 

 on many occasions. He always waited till a helpless leg 

 appeared, and then bounded away as if he could not 

 contain the canine laughter that was in him. Who shall 

 say, however, what was passing through the mind of the 

 dog in any of these three cases ? The motive of Mr. 

 Darwin's dog may have been to prolong the game, though 

 I expect there was something more than this. Mr. Romanes's 

 dog exemplified, perhaps, the sense of satisfaction at being 

 noticed. Sambo's performance is now, as it was years ago, 

 beyond me. But a sense of humour, involving a delicate 

 appreciation of the minor incongruities of life, is, I imagine, 

 too subtle an emotion for even Sambo. 



I pass now to the sense of beauty, and I shall consider 

 this at greater length, because of its bearing on sexual 

 selection and the origin of floral beauty. 



The interesting experiments of Sir John Lubbock already 

 alluded to seem to establish the fact that bees have certain 

 colour-preferences. Blue and pink are the most attractive 

 colours ; yellow and red are in less favour. No doubt these 



