272 BRITISH DOGS 



when a dog's intellect is cultivated, he is fully capable, if no obstacle 

 is put in his way, of the further cultivation of it himself almost to 

 any extent. 



One day the writer was out shooting with this bitch, accompanied 

 by one friend, in a very hard frost. There was hardly any scent of 

 course, but she managed, with very great caution, to find several 

 grouse at short distances. We had just arrived at the corner of a 

 copse of willows, at the bottom of which was a river. Belle, 

 who was soberly trotting a few yards in front of us, suddenly 

 stopped, pointed for a second towards the wood, then looked round, 

 and scurried away down the outside as fast as she could go. 

 Without a word being spoken, we drew behind a tree and waited. 

 We saw the bitch disappear in the wood close to the river, and then 

 there was silence for a few minutes. Of course we thought that she 

 was after her old dodge of driving grouse to the gun. By-and-by 

 there was a mighty crashing in the interior of the copse, accom- 

 panied, to our utter bewilderment, by a furious barking, and then 

 within five yards of us there emerged two deer, with Belle close 

 behind them. We were, alas ! only charged with shot, so we contented 

 ourselves with shooting at one only, and our four barrels stopped 

 him in a few hundred yards. 



Here is another instance of intelligent reasoning. The writer 

 was shooting alone with a Setter and a Retriever on a Cornish 

 moor, when a woodcock rose in a bit of brush. It was an awkward 

 shot between the trees, and he went on apparently unhurt. Now, 

 there was a narrow belt of thin wood on the left hand and a marsh 

 below, and the Setter took the two in her range. The writer noticed 

 that she stopped for a moment at one place in the brushwood, 

 but thought nothing of it. A couple of hundred yards or so farther 

 she pointed a snipe, which was killed. As the Retriever was coming 

 up with it, the Setter looked at the writer from her down charge 

 with a most quizzical gaze, and then got up and ran back as hard 

 as she could pelt. The old Retriever, standing still with the snipe 

 in her mouth, looked at her with wonder. Away she went out 

 of sight, and in a few seconds came tearing back, spit a wood- 

 cock out at the writer's feet with awful disgust, and then went on 

 hunting. There seems to be no doubt that, seeing the Retriever 

 bring the snipe made her think she ought to have done the 

 same with the dead thing she had seen and left back in the 

 brush, and that she at once proceeded to atone for the omission. 



The following shows also a natural reasoning power in a Setter, 

 even when it had not been cultivated. He was a Llewellin, and 

 good, though not nearly as good as the generality of that strain in 

 fact, his education had been neglected : he had just been " broken," 

 and nothing more. He did not seem to have any " gumption " 

 about anything, would go down wind just as fast as up, and of course 



