234 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 



tinctive peculiarities of the psychology of the dog is the high 

 degree in which there are developed the ideas of ownership 

 and property — ideas which have of course been bred into 

 canine intelligence by man. Most carnivorous animals in 

 their wild state have an idea of property as belonging to 

 captors, and the manner in which certain predacious Carnivora 

 take possession of more or less definite areas as their hunting- 

 grounds implies an incipient notion of the same thing. From 

 the germ thus supplied by nature the art of man has operated 

 in the case of the dog, till now the idea of defending his 

 master's property has become in this animal truly instinctive. 

 Without any training, and even sometimes against training, 

 many dogs will bark and fly at strangers passing the gates or 

 doors which bound their master's premises. Instances with- 

 out number might be multiplied to show the careful vigilance 

 of dogs over property entrusted to their charge ; but, as the 

 fact is so well known, space need not here be occupied with 

 its proof. I shall, however, give one or two observations 

 which I myself made in this connection on a terrier which I 

 reared from puppyhood, because I am perfectly certain that in 

 this case the idea of protecting property wa3 innate or in- 

 stinctive, and not due to individual instruction. I have seen 

 this dog escort a donkey which had baskets on its back filled 

 with apples. Although the dog did not know that he was 

 being observed, he accompanied the donkey all the way up a 

 long hill for the express purpose of guarding the apples. For 

 every time that the donkey turned back his head to take an 

 apple out of the baskets, the terrier sprang up and snapped at 

 his nose ; and such was the vigilance of the dog that, although 

 his companion was keenly desirous of tasting some of the 

 fruit, he never allowed him to get a single apple during the 

 half hour that they were left together. I have also seen this 

 terrier protecting meat from other terriers, which lived in the 

 same house with him, and with which he was on the best of 

 terms. More curious still, I have seen him seize my wrist- 

 bands while they were being worn by a friend to whom I had 

 temporarily lent them — no doubt recognizing them as mine 

 by his sense of smell, which was exceedingly good. 



Akin to this inborn idea of protecting the property of his 

 master, is the idea which the doc* has of himself as constitut- 

 ing a part of that property — i.e., the idea of ownership as 

 extended to himself. That this idea is likewise inborn I have 



