108 THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 
their usual appearance at the tree where they are accustomed to find 
a beef bone suspended, and the tree creepers are never-failing deni- 
zens of the sugar bushes. 
The last snowfall (on Sunday last), after the flooding rain of the 
13th and 14th of December, caused the snow bunting flock to be 
again much in evidence ; a reliable observer estimated the group as 
numbering at least 1,500. On enquiry, when on our recent visit to 
Georgian Bay region and to vicinity of Barrie, Ontario, we were told 
that flocks of snow buntings were believed to be very rare, indeed, 
visitants to that section of country. 
MISDIRECTED ABILITIES. 
After having an hour or two of reading in the pages of Prof. 
Wesley Mill’s ‘“ Nature and Development of Animal Intelligence,” 
we put pen to paper to memorandize a few thoughts about some 
useful animals whose idiosyncracies chanced to come under our ob- 
servation. Animal] intelligence seems to be an inert, dormant or 
latent quality, quite undemonstrative until “drawn out” or developed 
by environment, or the circumstances that induce what is termed 
experience. 
We once owned a puppy of the Collie breed, but had no leisure 
to devote effort to his training ; the beastie grew to be affectionate 
and to have many traits of intelligence, susceptibility and much 
gentleness towards children, also evident love of being noticed and 
caressed, and was of some service in helping to herd cattle and to 
keep various farm animals (when the dog was bidden), ‘‘in the ways 
that they should go.” “Bruin” was the name bestowed on the 
puppy, and he grew to be a very rough-haired specimen of the repu- 
table Collie breed, and soon evidenced a hankering or desire to 
prefer the society of sheep to that of other farm animals. “‘ Bruin’s ” 
instincts in this direction were not utilized by his owners, and the 
propensity to follow sheep and to bark at and control their move- 
ments and wanderings soon became spontaneous, and therefore 
dangerous to the well-being of the ovine denizens of the neighboring 
pastures. In such undirected wanderings ‘“‘ Bruin” scon fell into the 
company of tatterdemallion canines that kept bad hours, and his 
owners soon began to have apprehensions that Bruin would attain to 
the unenyiable notoriety of being a “‘sheep-killer,” so he was for a 
