CHAPTER IV. 
The Senses—Examples of Vision—Examples of Hearing, and 
discrimination of Sounds in the Australian Bush—Examples 
of Taste—Dram-drinkers—Smell, acuteness and discrimina- 
tion—Tracking Human Footsteps—Back Trail—Experiments 
on the Sense of Smell—Stone-hunting—Change of Habits 
Srom the Wild to the Domesticated State—Wagging the Tail 
—Barking—Origin of the Dingo—The Eskimo Dog—The 
St. Bernard—The Bulldog. 
No one who has paid the most casual attention to the actions of 
dogs can doubt that their senses are developed to an extra- 
ordinary degree, especially those of hearing and smelling. That 
of taste also, which is so closely correlated with the latter, is 
much more delicate than we might be apt to conclude from the 
behaviour of the animal in some circumstances. Professor 
Huxley under-estimated the power of vision, it seems to me, 
when he declared it to be much inferior to the same sense in 
man. Dogs do not, as can be determined from the anatomy of 
the eye, possess the astonishing power of adapting their vision 
to both near and distant objects, like a hawk, for instance, which 
can see a field mouse creeping in the grass while he poises 
himself on his wings a hundred feet above the meadow. The 
structure of the accipitrine eye at once reveals the secret of this 
almost telescopic power, enjoyed only by the Class of birds. 
Nevertheless, my own observations, as well as those of others, 
have led me to form a high estimate of this sense in the dog. 
H 
