THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



to discriminate diflPerent degrees of brightness might 

 possibly be of use, and this the animals may have. 

 This is the gift of the color-blind man, and is of 

 course a much older gift than the color-sense. 

 But of the dog's marvelous powers of scent, as dis- 

 played by the setter and the fox-hound, he can learn 

 little. Of his real intelligence and of his various 

 capacities and capabilities, he can learn little. We 

 do not need laboratory experiments to prove to us 

 that the dog's touchstone is his nose, and not his 

 eye; his eye is of second- or third-rate importance 

 to him; his ear serves him more than his eye; he 

 does not know his own master till he has got his 

 scent or heard his voice. For the most part he 

 sees only objects in motion. A fox will pass to wind- 

 ward within a few feet of the hunter if the hunter is 

 silent and motionless. There is little power of dis- 

 crimination in the eye of any of the canine tribe; the 

 acuteness of their other senses makes up for it. The 

 eye of a bird — a crow, a hawk — how different! 

 Sit as motionless as a statue, and you cannot escape 

 the eye of the crow — though the eyes of all animals 

 are especially sensitive to objects in motion. Prob- 

 ably none of them can discriminate a motionless 

 object as a man can. They have not reason to aid 

 them. A man's seeing is backed up by his stores 

 of knowledge. The way certain animals can be 

 " flagged " shows how superficial their seeing is. The 

 way a hawk will allow the approach of a man on 

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