452 FACULTY OF NUMEKATION. 



aborigines of New Caledonia ' can with difficulty count the 

 lowest numbers.' So that counting, arithmetic, or an arith- 

 metical sense ideas or notions of number are certainly 

 not innate in man (Biichner). The faculty of calculating 

 numbers is gradually developed in him, like so many other of 

 his acquirements, by education or cultivation. 



Certain of the lower animals possess a power of counting 

 or calculating numbers comparable, at least, with that which 

 characterises the savage races of men above specified. Thus, 

 in Scotland, the shepherd's dog must estimate exactly the 

 number of sheep under his charge. One is mentioned, for 

 instance, that, during the process of sheep-washing, brought 

 to the washing troughs, and without instruction, a series of 

 detachments of ten sheep at a time, running off for a fresh 

 detachment whenever he saw three only left in the pen 

 (' Land and Water '). 



In North Wales ' a shepherd will order one of his dogs to 

 fetch three sheep out of a flock on a hill some distance away, 

 and the dog will faithfully drive the required number ' to its 

 master a circumstance, it is added, ' commonplace enough 

 to sheep-breeders.' l The collie, sent to collect a flock or 

 flocks from many square miles of hill pasture, must know 

 their number when he brings all together without a single 

 omission ; and a knowledge of the number of sheep in a 

 flock must have been possessed also by certain sheep-steal- 

 ing dogs (' Percy Anecdotes'). Again, the sporting dog 

 notices correctly the number of birds that drop to the rifle of 

 its master (Nichols). Thus Mr. Berkeley's ' Wolf ' went 

 back, unbidden, at the end of a day's sport for a wounded 

 pheasant shot in an early part of the day. Dogs also count 

 correctly the number of railway stations that 'have been 

 passed, or of the stoppages that have been made, in a given 

 journey (Nichols). The performing dog Minos, that was 

 exhibited in London in 1875, was said to display * thorough 

 efficiency in the first four rules of arithmetic addition, sub- 

 traction, multiplication, and division.' 



* A mouse from whom nine young ones had been taken 

 came nine times to fetch them back one by one, and then no 

 more, although she had not been able to look into the cap in 



1 ' Graphic,' December 5, 1874, p. 538. 



