252 



77/6 Shepherd's Dog. 



Vol. IX. 



% 





16. 



v^V ,';.(„ 







denly coalesce, the balls will rush together 

 with an explosion, and all signs of excile- 

 ment will have disappeared. The two 

 charges have completely neutralized each 

 other; the excess of electricity in the one 

 having supplied the deficiency in the other. 

 Observation.^The intelligent reader will 

 perceive that I have proceeded on the sup- 

 position of a single electrical fluid— the 

 Franklinean theory. Of course those who 

 hold a different theory will be disposed to 

 cavil at some parts of this essay. It will 

 be for them to show that my statements are 

 not in conformity with facts. Franklin. 



First month 1st, 1845. 



The Shepherd's Dog. 



In the ninth No. of ihe last volume of the Cabinet, 

 was given a heautiful cut of the Shepherd's Dog, with 

 Rn interesting account of him from a correspondent. 

 The following lively article we take fnmi the Salem 

 Register, Ohio, which credits it to a late English 

 work.— Ed. 



The Shepherd's Dog in his own depart- 

 ment is a perfect miracle of intelligence. 

 He understands the sign, the voice, th'e look 

 of his master. H^ collects the scattered 

 sheep at the slightest signal, separates any 

 one that is indicated from the rest of the 

 flock, drives them wherever he is told, and 

 keeps thorn all the while under perfect con- 

 tro!, less by his active exertions than by the 

 modulations of his voice, which expresses 

 every tone from gentle instruction to angry 

 menace. These are his ordinary perform- 

 ances, visible every day in a thou.sand pas- 

 tures. But he can do greater wonders. It 

 chanced one night that seven hundred lambs, 

 committed to the keeping of the Ettrick 

 Shepherd,.broke loose from his control and 

 scampered away in three divisions over hill 

 and plain. "Sirrah, my man," said Hogg 

 mournfully to his colly, meaning it for an 

 expression of grief, and not for a direction, 

 " they're awa." Silently and without his 

 master's knowledge, for it was too dark to 



see, the dog left his side, while the shep- 

 herd passed tlie hours till morning in a 

 weary and fruitless search after his wander- 

 ing charge. At the dawn of the day he 

 was about to return home with a heart full 

 of despair, when he catight a sight of Sir- 

 rah guarding at the bottom of a deep ravine, 

 not, as he at first supposed, one division of 

 the lambs, but the whole of the vast flock, 

 without a solitary exception. " It was," 

 says James Hogg, " the most extraordinary 

 circumstance that had ever occurred in my 

 pastoral life. How he had got all the divis- 

 ions collected in the dark is beyond my com- 

 prehension. The charge was left entirely 

 to himself, from midnight until the rising of 

 the sun, and if all the sliepherds in the forest 

 had been there to have assisted him, they 

 could not have effected it with greater pro- 

 priety." On another occasion the same fa- 

 mous shepherd saw a dog, when it was ut- 

 terly dark, put upon the path of a ewe that 

 had been lost by her owner near a neigh- 

 bour's farm, and which was supposed to have 

 mingled with her fellows that were feeding 

 in the surrounding pastures. "Chieftain," 

 said the master of the dog, pointing to the 

 spot from which the sheep had gone off, 

 "fetch that, I say, sir — bring that back; 

 away!" And away he went, and back he 

 brought, in half an hour, the identical sheep. 

 A sheep-stealer, who was at last discovered 

 and hanged, used to carry on his trade by 

 secretly signifying the particular sheep that 

 he desired out of a large flock, as he viewed 

 them under the pretence of purchasing, to 

 his dog, who returning by himself, a distance 

 of several miles at night, drove the selected 

 sheep, which was undoubtedly the fattest, 

 to his fastidious owner. Both Scott and 

 Hogg relate this picturesque story more cir- 

 cumstantially from the annals of the Justi- 

 ciary Court, in Scotland. Sir Thomas Wilde 

 knew an instance in which three oxen out 

 of some score, had mingled with another 

 herd. "Go fetch them," was all the in- 

 struction the drover gave his dog, and he 

 instantly brought along with him those very 

 three. A cattle dealer, accustomed to drive 

 his beasts for nine miles to Alston, in Cum- 

 berland, once for a wager, sent them alone 

 with his dog. The animal perfectly under- 

 stood his commission. He kept the straight 

 road, ran when he came to a strange drove, 

 to the head of his own to stop their progress, 

 put the beasts that blocked the path upon 

 one side, then went back again to the rear 

 to hie on his charge, and thus adroitly steer- 

 ing his way and keeping his herd together, 

 he carried them safely to the destined yard, 

 and signified their arrival by barking at the 

 door of the dwelling, 



