DOG-LOGIC 39 



conscious awareness of time and its periods. Even the 

 duller senses of domestic animals may associate the strik- 

 ing of a clock with a responsiveness, superhumanly 

 delicate, to the changing hours of the day. But this, of 

 course, is the other way round, and the most probable 

 explanation seems to be that the dog detected some pre- 

 liminary sign or movement to the daily ceremony. If not, 

 I give it up. For a discussion of animals' power of 

 "localization in time," see Lloyd Morgan's chapter 

 ' 'Memory in Animals " in his "Comparative Psychology." 



SAGACITY IN A DOG 



As a reader of your paper I have noticed you welcome 

 instances of special sagacity in animals, and the following 

 instance may be of interest to your readers. I own a fine 

 Airedale dog, eight years of age. I have never taught him 

 tricks, preferring a healthy animal to a performing mon- 

 key ; but as he lives with us in the house he has naturally 

 learnt the meaning of words and signs on his own account , 

 and adapted himself to the ways of the house. In the 

 winter months we are in the habit of having porridge for 

 breakfast, and during his first winter (aged eight or ten 

 months) we were in the habit of putting him down the 

 remains of a plate of porridge each morning, but finding 

 he was apt to slobber the food on to the carpet, we put a 

 newspaper under the plate morning by morning. He soon 

 learnt the connection between the newspaper and the 

 porridge, and used to bring the newspaper himself, and 

 before long fetched it from the newspaper rack without 

 any suggestion on our part. This is all very interesting, 

 but quite ordinary. Now comes the point of the story. 

 In the following spring we left off our porridge owing to 

 the warm weather, and after fetching his paper for several 

 days and finding no porridge resulted, he ceased fetching 

 his newspaper, and not once during the whole summer 

 did he bring the paper again until a day in the following 

 October. When for the first time for six months porridge 



