410 
when reduced to work its way back along such a train. But my 
point is, that a dog will regularly think of all things, stationary 
or moving, by their smell, where we think of them by their 
touch as handled, and this upon the simple ground of fact that a 
dog has no hands ; in which case the continuity of a road will 
as litt!e 'o the doz as to us depend upon the standing-still of 
flocks of sheep or any other passing objects. It is true that our ex- 
perience dees nor enable us easily to fancy what sort of world 
this of the dog’s wil be, but at the worst we need not conceive it, 
with the writer, upon the analogy of a succession of coloured 
mists. Do we, even with our intermittent smell, find it so im- 
possible to refer the ditfused odour of a dung-hill to a particular 
source? Or, to take a fair parallel case, if a sound is diffused so 
that it may be heard anywhere throughout a great hall, do we 
therefore suppose it to be everywhere and not to emerge from a 
definite spot? To the psychologist the strictly tactile properties 
of objects are themselves but sensations, which we are deter- 
mined to project away from us in a certain definite order—as it 
happens, a very sharply defined order. With different means of 
projection and different sensations to project, how should the 
dog not have its own different world—the best it can devise out 
of its exprriences ? 
Such reference to the fact of a dog’s organs of sense being 
what they obviously are, ought not to be discounted as mere 
speculation, but perhaps that must be borne with. Facts of the 
other sort—reports, more or less authentic, of the feats of parti- 
cular dogs—when made a ground for ascribing to the species 
pretersatural powers of divination, merely because the facts are 
not explicable under the conditions of human experience, are 
beset with their own difficulty. Dogs do not always find their 
way back, even from the next street. Let all that side of the 
matter be thought of, before we suppose some unerring instinct 
to account for the remarkable enough feats of some that cannot 
be denied, Of course no train of evanescent smells can guide a 
dog back upon a road from which they have died away ; as little, or 
sill less, can the succession of particular smells, however con- 
stant, lesd a dog night upon a line that he has never travelled 
over nefore. But that dogs, while they have no such touch as 
ours, €o constanly ue ther sense of smell to guide them, can- 
no: be eoubted ; and the result to them must be such a very 
differ-n’ world ot experience from ours, though developed under 
common laws of acquisition, that we have no means of deciding 
what is impossible to be done by some dogs through mere expe- 
rience, 
One of your correspondents, Mr, Brewer, had good remarks 
in this sense the other week. One point he raised besides upon 
which I would add a word. The point was whether for the dog 
smells would enter, instead of touches, into that fundamental 
experience of an external world, of which visual sensations are 
but marks or symbols. I should imagine that they would enter 
into its experience of modes of extension, by us acquired chiefly 
through the moving hand. But into the experience of modes of 
res'stance, the general tactile sensibility diffused over the surface 
of the body would enter for the dog as well as for us. 
Mr. George Henry Lewes appends to his letter on p. 4or1 
of this week’s NATURE, the following contribution to this 
subject :— 
Gratiolet, in his work on the ‘Nervous System,” 
mentions that a dog of his was always thrown into convulsions of 
/ NATURE 
terror by the scent of a small piece of wolf’s skin, which was so 
old that it was worn toa shred. In my room there is a perfectly 
unworn wolfskin made ino a rug, and on this my bulldog was 
accustomed luxuriously to stretch himself, without any but plea- 
surable emotions. Now this may have been due either to bis 
impe fect snee of smell, or, what is more probable, to his not 
hiving inherited any terror from ancestors more likely to attack 
than to be afraid of a wolf, 
Mr. Laughton, of the Royal Naval Colleze, Greenwich, 
sends us a valuable letter, from which we extract the 
following :— 
A passage in Sir Bartle Frere’s paper on Cutch (Journal 
of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xl. p. 186), seems 
to bear on this subject which has been interesting the 
readers of Nature for some weeks past. He says :—‘‘ As | 
elsewhere in the plain country of Sind, and here more con- | 
spicuously, owing to the absence of any prominent natural | 
features or marked tracts, the best guides sem to depend entirely 
on a kind of instinct—they will generaily indicate the exact | 
bearing of a distant point which is not in sight quite as accurately 
as a common compass would give it to one who knew the true — 
bearing. They affect no mysterious knowledge, but are generally 
quite unable to give any reason fortheir conclusion, which seems_ 
the result of an instinct—like that of dogs and horses and other 
animals—unerring, but not founded.on any process of reasoning, 
which others can trace or follow.” 
[ incline strongly to the solution put forward by the writer — 
in the Quarterly (see letter in last number). If to this we 
add the consideration that dogs certainly can and do interchange 
ideas, and may therefore question other dogs as to the general 
direction in which they wish to go, the two together seem to offer — 
a reasonable though hypothetical explanation of the very curious 
facts referred to. ‘A 
Mr. George R. Jebb, of Shrublands, Chester, writing on 
March 18, says— ; “ 
Last Thursday I sent my terrier dog (Tartar) by train from — 
Chester to Shrewsbury by Great Western Railway (ze. by way 
of Wrexham and Ruabon), I myself went by the North Western — 
line via Broxton and Whi'church; the distance by the former road — 
is 42 miles, by the latier 38: the two railways diverge from each — 
other for some 20 miles from Chester, and are then 16 miles — 
apart ; they afterwards converge and join at Shrewsbury. Tartar 
was sent from Shrewsbury to Broxton station, which is 10 miles 
from Chester, by the 2.55 train. I had previously arranged with 
the station-master to keep the dog for five or ten minutes after the 
departure of the train, and then to set him at liberty on the public — 
road. The train arrived at Broxton at four o’clock. Tartar hung | 
about the station till nearly 5. 30, perhaps longer, as he was not seen — 
starting off. He was at home at Chester at nine ; he was not at — 
alldistressed. It is probable, I think, that he came back pretty 
divect. It is certain he came across ten miles of country, the 
greatest part of which he had never traversed before. It is also 
certain he did not return 7/@ Shrewsbury, as there was not time. — 
He had never been at Br »xton before. 
Does not this experiment seem to prove that dogs—some at 
least—possess the wonderful power (the nature of which is at — 
present unknown) of arriving at the knowledge of the direction — 
of their home when they have been taken from it long distances 
by circuitous routes? And if so, is it not more probable that a — 
dog when lost usually makes use of this power to guide himself — 
home by the shortest practicable road, than that he finds his way 
back ‘‘ by means of the odours he took note of” on the outward 
journey? How do pigeons find their way home? A railway con- — 
tractor told me he has a pony which he uses chiefly for drawing a — 
light ‘‘lorry” upon a tramway nowin course of construction. There 
are on this tramway some loops or passing places for waggons at 
intervals of a mile or so. These points are dangerous if passed 
too quickly. The contractor drives the pony himself often ata — 
very fast rate. The pony will on the darkest nights suddenly 
pul up at the dangerous points without the slightest check from 
the driver, who otherwise would be obliged to proceed with the 
greatest caution. Does the pony know his whereabouts by the 
sense of smell, hearing, or touch? Probably, I should say, by 
all three acting in unison. 
The Rev. O. Fisher, of Harlton, writes :— 
On a bright day when I have} flowers in my window, bees 
frequently precipitate themselves against the window-panes, 
evidently desirous of reaching the plants. This is easily ex- 
plained by the sense of sight ; but the rtmarkable thing is that 
they do the same when the blind is drawn down, so that they 
cannot see the flowers, and it seems impossible that they should 
smell them while the window is shut. Can it be that that all- — 
pervading ather, which brings ligit to our eyes, and is also 
believed to convey the magnetic and electric forces through media 
impervious to light, may act in a manner other than luminiferous 
towards some animals, and produce ‘‘action at a distance” upon 
their organs? 
A Scotch correspondent, R. C., who has givenus his full 
name and address, sends us the following interesting 
facts :— 
A few years ago a sheep, one of a flock, belonging to Mr. 
Miller, flesher, Beith, Ayrshire, gave birth to three lambs; 
thinking that three were too heavy for the mother to su kle, 
he gave one toa firmer, who lived three quarters of a mile 
from the field where the sheep lambed. This one was taken 
away from the mother when barely a day old, aud carried 
to the farmer’s, where it was shut up in a close house.— 
