282 
Second Report of the Winchester College 
Society. Second and Third Years. 
J. Wells, 1873.) 
Tus Report contains a record of the doings of the 
Society from May 1871 to February 1873, and is 
thoroughly encouraging, and certainly a great contrast to 
the Reports of the two other public schools recently noticed 
in these pages. The Winchester Report proves that, by 
judicious management, a School Natural History Society 
may be made to yield most gratifying results, 
The present Report for the two last years, although its 
record of the earlier papers is incomplete, shows that the 
Natural History 
(Winchester : 
Society has been fully alive, and has been growing quietly. 
and steadily, and doing real and satisfactory work. The 
numbers of the Society are not at this time actually full. 
But it appears that the elder half of the members are nearly 
all of them real workers, and it is hoped that the younger 
half are learning to be the same. It is of more conse- 
quence, as the Preface rightly says, that those who belong 
to the Society should be working members, than that its 
numbers should be swelled by names, The meetings of 
the Society have been well attended, and there has been 
apparent an increasing appreciation of the opportunities 
afforded by the meetings for showing and seeing objects 
of interest, as well as for reading and hearing papers. 
It is satisfactory to see that old members take an 
interest in the society after leaving school, several of 
them contributing valuable papers. 
In general, however, we are extremely glad to see, the 
papers have been those of actual members, and the 
Society may well feel satisfaction at the increasing readi- 
ness, ability, and completeness shown by the leading 
members in supplying papers at its meetings. The 
papers which have been read by the Secretarics, Hall, 
Goddard, and Forbes, may, perhaps, the Preface says, 
and we think justly, be specially remarked, as com- 
bining ability with knowledge based upon personal ob- 
servation. It isin these papers that the growth of the 
Society’s work has be2n chiefly seen, and in which its 
main value consists. 
The collections belonging to the School have been con- 
siderably increased. The cabinets attached to the Moberly 
Library now contain about 4,000 specimens, and more are 
waiting to be mounted and added. 
Among the “ desiderata” the Preface mentions the fol- 
lowing, in case old Wykehamists, or other friends of the 
School, may be able and willing to supply them :—In 
Entomology, specimens of Notodontidz and Pyralides, 
amongst Lepidoptera; and of any other orders than 
Lepidoptera. In Conchology, recent Brachiopoda, and 
Pteropoda. In Geology, Fossils from any of the Primary 
Formations, Wealden Beds, Red Crag, and Coralline 
Crag. 
The Report contains a number of very interesting 
papers, mostly by Messrs, E, H. Goddard, W. A. Forbes, 
and C, S. Rayner, evidently three of the most industrious 
members of the Society: all the papers are evidence 
of original observation and independent thought on the 
part of the writers. The first-mentioned contributes the 
following papers :—“ Hymenoptera,” “ Botany and Ento- 
mology” (in which the localities in the district are indi- 
cated in which the collector will reap the best harvest of 
flowers and butterflies), and one on “ Gall Insects.” Mr. 
W.A. Forbes contributes papers on “Coleoptera,” “British 
Reptiles,” and “ Mimicry and Protective Resemblance.” 
Mr. Raynor contributes a useful paper “On the Different 
Methods of obtaining Lepidoptera,” and a very careful 
and interesting one “ On the Different Modes of Conceal- 
ment and Defence practised by Insects.” The Report 
also contains a paper on “ The Diamond Fields of South 
Africa,” sent by Mr. E, A. Hall. Appended are very full 
and carefully compiled Botanical, Entomological, and 
Geological Lists. We hope the next Report will contain 
a list of the local Fauna, which it is proposed to form. 
NATURE 
Pe ES 1 ae Ne ee 
v 
. 
[Aug. 7, 1873 
I&@TTERS TO THE EDITOR 
[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 
by his correspondents, No notice is taken of anonymous 
communications. ] 
Perception and Instinct in the Lower Animals 
I HAVE waited some timé in the expectation that some of 
your readers would have asked Mf Wallace a very obvious 
question with regard to the incident he adduces of a doz finding 
his master five months after having been lost, and in a house 
which the latter ‘‘had not contemplated going to or even seen 
before the loss of the dog.” (NaTuRE, vol. viii. p. 66.) In 
seeking to account for this thoroughly authentic and highly 
remarkable case, Mr. Wallace observes: ‘Could it have 
obtained information from other dogs ....? Could the 
odour of persons and furniture linger two months in the streets ? 
These are almost the only conceivable sources of information ; 
for the most thorough-going advocates for a ‘‘sense of direction” 
will hardly maintain that it could enable a dog to go straight to 
his master, wherever he might happen to be.” Now, there is 
yet a third supposition open to us, and it is one which, in the 
absence of information, is certainly the most probable. Can 
Mr. Wallace’s friend remember whether he had been walking in 
the vicinity of his new house during the day upon which the dog 
returned? 7.¢. can he be sure the dog did not trace his footsteps ? 
That a keen-scented terrier is able to distinguish and to follow 
his master’s track in a public thoroughfare, however densely it 
may be crowded, I know from the success of searching expe- 
riments. 
With regard to dogs communicating information to one 
another, I may mention that I have often observed them 
doing so. According to my experience, the dogs must be much 
above the average in intelligence, and the gesture they inyariably 
employ is a contact of heads witha motion between a rub and a 
butt. It is quite different from anything that occurs in play, and 
is always followed by some definite course of action. I must 
add, however, that although the information thus conveyed is 
always definite, I have never known a case in which it was 
complex—anything like asking or telling the way being, I 
believe, quite out of the question ; so far, at least, as this action 
is concerned. One example will suffice. A Skye terrier (not 
quite pure) was asleep in the room where I was, while his son 
Jay upon a wall which separates the lawn from the high road. 
The young dog, when alone, would never attack a strange one, 
but was a keen fighter when in company with his father. Upon 
the present occasion a large mongrel passed along the road, and, 
shortly afterwards, the old dog awoke and went sleepily down 
stairs. When he arrived upon the door-step his son ran up to 
him and made the sign just described. His whole manner im- 
mediately altered to that of high animation, and, clearing the 
wall together, the two animals ran down the road as terriers 
only-can when pursuing an enemy. I watched them for a mile 
and a half, within which distance their speed never abated, 
although the object of their pursuit had not, from the first, been 
in sight. 
ic the instinct question seems to have come to a close it is 
desirable to observe that the only outcome of its discussion has 
been to intensify the previous belief in the existence of some 
unexplained faculty, which may be provisionally termed a sense 
of direction. Mr, Wallace, in his general reply, avowedly 
ignores all those cases adduced by your correspondents in which 
his theory cannot possibly apply ; ¢.”. dogs describing the third 
side of a triangle, or returning by land whence they had been 
taken by sea. He says: ‘‘Several of the writers argue as if I 
had maintained that in all cases dogs, &c. find their way, wholly 
or mainly, by smell ; whereas I strictly limited it to the case in 
which their other senses could not be used” (vol. viii. p. 65). 
Now, whether or not Mr. Wallace originally intended his letter 
to raise the general issue as to the presence in dogs of a sense 
of direction, this has certainly been its effect, so that the in- 
stances he here refers to are not in any way beside the question 
which immediately arose. I have much too high an esteem for 
Mr. Wallace to say anything that might lead to a discussion with 
him, but it is evident that these remarks have no such tendency ; 
for, if he admits, as he candidly does in the sentence just quoted, 
that his theory cannot apply to all cases, it necessarily follows 
that, even could he proveit to be true in some, the fact, although 
of considerable psychological interest, would leave the question 
as to a sense of direction just where it was before. 
It should be borne in mind that dogs are not the only animals . — 
