Have Dogs a Sense of Humour ? 235 
me captive on this matter by the account he gives of his 
favourite colley: “It’s a good sign of a dog when his face 
grows like his master’s. It’s a proof he’s aye glowring up 
in his master’s een to discover what he’s thinking on. Hector 
got so like me afore he dee’d that I remember, when I was 
owre lazy to gang to the kirk, I used to send him to take my 
place in the pew, and the minister never kent the differ- 
ence. Indeed, he asked me next day what I thocht of the 
sermon; for he saw me wonderfu’ attentive amang a rather 
sleepy congregation. Hector and me gied ane anither sic a 
look! We was like to split; and the dog, after laughing in 
his sleeve for mair than a hundred yards, couldn't stand’t 
nae longer, but was obliged to loup awa owre a hedge into a 
potato field, pretending to scent partridges.” Such excellent 
fooling may almost persuade us of the existence of a sense of 
humour in a Scot’s dog, and even in the Scot himself! 
However closely some animals may approach the dog in 
intelligence alone, none other has ever laid down his own life 
through very weariness of existence when the bond between 
himself and his master has been severed by death, or has 
sacrificed his life in the endeavour to preserve that of his 
master. The well-attested cases of dogs refusing food, and 
pining to death at the graves of their masters, evince a depth 
of sympathy uncommon even in human beings. Landseer has 
embodied this finely in his pathetic picture of “The Shep- 
herd’s Chief Mourner.” Who but he could have so truly 
depicted the expression of grief on the countenance of the 
colley, sitting with his head laid on his master’s coffin? Ben 
Jonson refers to this undying attachment when the body 
of Sejanus was cast into the Tiber by order of the tyrant 
Sabinus : 
His faithful dog, upbraiding all us Romans, 
Never forsook the corpse, but seeing it thrown 
Into the stream, leaped in, and drowned with it. 
—Sejanus, Act 1V., Se. 5. 
In the Dundee Advertiser, some years ago, the following 
