190 LIFE OF SIR JOHN LUBBOCK CH . 



A note of October 26 is curious. 



Dined at May's. Gladstone said that on one occasion 

 he had peculiar difficulty in making up his Government. 

 He and Mrs. G. wrote the names and the offices on bits 

 of paper, and spent the whole evening in trying to match 

 them. At last he gave it up, and they went to bed. He 

 had a good night, and during his sleep everything had 

 arranged itself satisfactorily in his brain. 



About this time he began some experiments, 

 which he did not carry to a very satisfactory 

 conclusion, on the intelligence of the dog. " Am 

 thinking," he notes, " of trying to apply to a 

 dog the system under which the Deaf and Dumb 

 are taught, and especially that used in Laura 

 Bridgman's case. I went to the Deaf and Dumb 

 Institute and explained my idea to the master. 

 He said he would like to try it, and I arranged to 

 send him a dog." 



I ventured to point out to Sir John, and he 

 fully admitted the force of the objection, that in 

 experimenting as he did on the dog's power of 

 discrimination, he was experimenting with the 

 wrong sense. A dog's real and ultimate sense of 

 discrimination and identification is olfactory 

 rather than visual — by the nose, not by the 

 eye. 



The conclusions, such as they were, at which 

 Sir John did arrive, and the experiments that he 

 tried, are recorded in his book on the Senses of 

 Animals. 



At the end of the year he made an arrangement 

 with the other partners at the Bank which set 

 him free from the obligation of regular attendance, 

 so that he should have the more time to devote 



