KEASON IN THE DOG. 273 



As to the facility of scent, as I liavo elscwliere 

 shown, there is no accounting for it; the dead 

 deer proved that it was not breath, nor was it a 

 trace . afforded 1)y blood, — the footsteps at starting 

 of four men, three of them strangers to the dog, 

 had trodden for a space the same path, and were 

 mingled together, all starting from the same pool 

 of blood ; yet the dog's fine and strange dis- 

 crimination detected the footsteps of the man 

 who carried the thing his master liad lost — that 

 thing the dog had not seen killed nor beheld 

 it in his master's possession. He had never hunted 

 its scent, and yet for miles, and through and over 

 every obstacle, he knew the footstej^s of tlie 

 tliief who had committed the dishonest act, and 

 overtook the stolen treasure. 



In discussions on scent in tlie Field newspaper 

 some years ago, a writer, who really knew very 

 little of the matter, asserted it to 1)e his belief that 

 a wounded animal or bird trying to escape capture, 

 and, therefore, in terror, — to use this writer's own 

 terms, — ^Miad the power of withholding its scent," 

 or, in other words, shutting off steam, or closiug 

 the valve, with a view to escape the keen per- 

 ception of a dog's nose. Now we all know that 



VOL. I. T 



