Tracking Footsteps. 11g 
of retrieving live game. Among the dense patches of scrub 
and thick forest there it is an easy matter to lose a dog who 
runs off for a hundred yards on the trail of a wallaby. 
This repeatedly happened with Master Carlo, and, being 
reluctant to establish the bad habit of bringing him back 
by call or whistle, lest a shot at a duck might be lost, I 
used to stand still and wait for him. Finding the wallaby 
too fast for him, it may be supposed he gave up the chase, 
and then became suddenly struck with the consciousness of 
being lost in the bush. Sometimes I could catch sight of 
him running hither and thither in a bewildered way, present- 
ing quite as touching a spectacle of mental distress as any 
lost child. 
Watching him from behind a tree after he had made 
several excursions with me into the bush, I had an opportunity 
of observing the beginnings of the man-hunting accomplish- 
ment. He looked about him, stood still, listened attentively, 
lifted his head and howled, then ran on aimlessly, occasionally 
dropping his nose to the ground, as if impelled by some 
internal impulse, not, I thought, with any conscious intention 
of using his nose. This went on for some minutes, until he 
accidentally passed within afew yards of the tree, got wind 
of me, and rolled on my feet with delight at having found 
his master, and relieved an anxiety which had been as 
grievous in its way as we ourselves could experience. We 
can all understand what passed through that little canine 
heart bereaved in the wilderness—the heir of all the ages 
of domestication, separated from all it knew of companionship 
and sympathy, its feelings so pathetically expressed by the 
mournful wail sent up in the sombre gum forest. But we 
cannot understand that fitful dropping of the nose to the 
ground on any other supposition than that it represented 
the unconscious exercise of an hereditary racial instinct of 
over mastering force, called forth by the present stress of 
circumstances. When once the generalised instinct is thus 
called into play, its application to the settlement of any 
