282 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



it is easy to agree with Dr. Romanes. The other 

 offensive instinct of the dog, of which burying meat 

 to make it putrid, rolling in filth, etc., etc., are 

 different manifestations, is not a survival, in the 

 sense in which zoologists use that word, any more 

 than the desire of the well-fed cat for the canary, 

 and of the hen-hatched ducklings for the pond, are 

 survivals. These are important instincts which 

 have never ceased to operate. The dog is a flesh- 

 eater with a preference for carrion, and his senses 

 of taste and smell are correlated, and carrion 

 attracts him just as fruit attracts the frugivorous 

 bat. Man's smelling sense and the dog's do not 

 correspond ; they are inverted, and what is delight- 

 ful to one is disgusting to the other. " A cur's 

 tail may be warmed and pressed and bound round 

 with ligatures, and after twelve years of labour 

 bestowed on it, it will retain its original form," 

 is an Oriental saying. In like manner the dog may 

 be shut up in an atmosphere of opoponax and 

 frangipani for twelve hundred years and he will 

 love the smell of carrion still. When the dog runs 

 frisking and barking, he expresses gladness ; and 

 he expresses a still greater degree of gladness by 

 madly rolling, feet up, on the grass, uttering a 

 continuous purring growl. The discovery of a 

 carrion smell on the grass will always cause the 

 dog to behave in this way. It is the something 

 wanting still in the life of enforced separation from 

 the odours that delight him ; and when he unex- 

 pectedly discovers a thing of this kind his joy is 



