38 DOGS 



thing) till 7 a.m., when, exactly as the clock strikes, he 

 leaps on to the bed and tries to aid me in the matter of 

 ablutions ! I was very anxious to see what he would do 

 on Easter Sunday morning, when the clocks had been 

 advanced one hour during the night on account of the 

 Daylight Saving Act. I was therefore very much sur- 

 prised when he jumped up as usual as the clock struck 

 7 a.m. (really 6) ! He could not possibly have heard any 

 familiar sounds of life, as no one was yet stirring. There 

 seem to me to be only three possible explanations he can 

 count the strokes of the clock, or he understood our con- 

 versations the previous evening about putting on the clock , 

 or it was merely a very strange coincidence. I am inclined 

 to favour the first or second proposition. 



0. K. I. DE B. 



April 23, 1917. 



NOTE. If this dog is not an " unacknowledged legis- 

 lator ' ' as yet it is at any rate such law-abiding citizens 

 as he that make the keeping of good Acts of Parliament 

 possible. He certainly went one better than the dove (see 

 p. 160), since he could not only count, but regulate his 

 conduct by the results of his counting. I heard this story 

 recently : There was a man who used to feed the birds 

 in a large garden every day at a certain hour, and five 

 minutes before time they used to assemble and await him. 

 The first day of ' ' summer-time ' ' arrived would the birds 

 be an hour late? There they were waiting for him an 

 hour earlier than usual ! But it is a very sound rule in 

 science not to accept a higher explanation if a lower is 

 possible. The birds (the feathered tribes are the most 

 observant animals in the world including man) knew 

 their friend was coming by the gardeners performing cer- 

 tain actions, and as they performed them an hour earlier, 

 so the birds assembled in conformity. Possibly the 

 rhythmical susceptibility of animals to changes of season, 

 climate, temperature, etc., gives them a kind of sub- 



