124 The Carnivora. 
rather with the hope of finding the object of my search by 
a happy accident than with any expectation of succeeding by 
systematic efforts. At a certain spot I had crawled through 
the ferns for some distance on hands and knees, and there, 
probably, the flask had fallen from my pocket. If I 
could find this spot. there might be some chance of picking 
up my trail by following the line of bent and broken ferns, 
but that place, could not be, I knew much less than half 
a mile away. Seeing me intent upon some object which he 
perceived by my manner and downcast eyes could not be 
sport, the dog looked up in my face inquiringly, and it 
then occured to me, as a forlorn hope, to try the experiment 
of crying, “Seek, there, boy.” If one may be permitted to 
make an attempt at divining a dog’s thoughts, a train of 
reflection would seem to have passed through his mind in 
this wise; “No shot has been fired, therefore there is no 
game to find. What, then, can my master mean now by 
‘Seek there’? Surely, he must intend me to look for 
something belonging to him, as he often does when he hides 
a boot or some other thing that he has handled and sends 
me for it. Well, I can always do that by following his 
scent, so I can now.” Those who believe with that great 
philospher, John Locke, who, by-the-by, nowhere in his 
works evinces any considerable Imowledge of animals, 
that “the power of abstracting is not at all in them 
....that they do, some of them in certain instances reason, 
but only in particular ideas, just as they received them from 
their senses,” will by no means allow me to attribute to the 
dog even so simple a generalisation as this. 
I leave them, however, to explain what the mental process 
was which prompted him to act as he did on hearing the 
command. He cast round for a few seconds in an excited 
manner, and soon found my trail, working so fast on it that 
I could not at first follow without repeatedly checking him. 
Those who are familiar with the Australian bush will appreciate 
the difficulty of working, now through the scrubs on soft, 
