INTRODUCTION 



IN our judgments of the respective 

 intellectual capacities of the animals 

 which lend themselves to human com- 

 panionship, any approach to scientific 

 accuracy in our comparative psychology 

 demands that we should compare our sub- 

 jects in their native condition. Heredity 

 plays a part which often overtops Nature, 

 and we have no means of ascertaining the 

 effect of such intellectual progress in the 

 animal as may be due to the influence of 

 the mind of man in the process of domes- 

 tication. When I was living much with 

 hunters in the American wilderness, I have 

 been struck with the differences between 

 dogs of the same parentage owned by hunt- 

 ers of different temperaments and intellectual 

 capacities, and it is hardly saying too much 

 to say that the greater part of the power 

 which is very like that of reasoning in the 



