39 8 Animal Life and Intelligence. 



was a favourite black retriever, and a highly intelligent 

 animal. " One day," says Mrs. Mann, " a miserable- 

 looking white dog came into our yard. Carlo went up to 

 him, looking displeased, dog-fashion, and ready to fly at 

 the intruder. It was clear, however, that some commu- 

 nication passed between them, for Carlo's wrath seemed 

 disarmed, and he trotted into the kitchen, coming out again 

 with a chop-bone (one with a good deal of meat on it) 

 which the cook had given him. On looking into the yard, 

 the miserable cur was seen enjoying the bone, Carlo sitting 

 straight up watching him with a look of satisfaction." * 



That dogs feel sympathy with man will scarcely be 

 questioned by any one who has known the companionship 

 of these four-footed friends. At times they seem in- 

 stinctively to grasp our moods, to be silent with us when 

 we are busy, to lay their shaggy heads on our knees when 

 we are worried or sad, and to be quickened to fresh life 

 when we are gay and glad so keen are their perceptions. 

 Their life with man has implanted in them some of the 

 needs of social beings ; and as they are ever ready to 

 sympathize with us, so do they rejoice in our sympathy. 

 To be deprived of that sympathy, to be neglected, to have 

 no attention bestowed on them, is to some dogs a punish- 

 ment more bitter than direct reproof. Mr. ' Eomanes 

 quotes, t an account given him by Mrs. E. Picton of a Skye 

 terrier who had the greatest aversion to being washed, 

 snarling and biting during the operation. Threats, beating, 

 and starvation were all of no avail; but the animal was 

 reduced to submission by persistent neglect on the part of 

 his mistress. At the end of a week or ten days he looked 

 wretched and forlorn, and yielded himself quite quietly and 



* Miss Nellie Maclagan describes how her Newfoundland similarly took 

 a roll to a hungry pauper-friend (Nature, vol. xxviii. p. 150). Mr. Duncan 

 Stewart gives (Nature, vol. xxviii. p. 31) the case of a cat who used frequently 

 to provide her blind mother with food. Sir Harry Lumsden states that 

 during the cold autumn of 1878 some tame partridges in Aberdeenshire 

 brought two wild coveys to be fed near the doorstep of the house. And a 

 case has been communicated to me by Miss Agnes Tanner, of Clifton, of a 

 thrush that pulled up worms on the lawn for a lame companion. 



t " Animal Intelligence," p. 440. 



