Quadrupeds. 909 



their master, would drop their tail, and shrink away with an evident 

 sense of fear, and on these a smile would have produced a precisely 

 contrary effect. Many also, which are kept as curs for the protec- 

 tion of property, can distinguish immediately from the appearance 

 of the persons with whom they come in contact, whether they are 

 such as call for their interference or not, showing their " respect 

 for persons," by allowing the well-dressed gentleman to pass by un- 

 molested, and, on the contrary, exhibiting every symptom of anger at 

 the ragged beggar. An old dog, of the pointer breed, with which I 

 was intimately acquainted, if he came, during his peregrinations, to 

 two roads, leading from the same point to his own home, let him 

 have travelled both equally, would always select the shortest, even, in 

 some instances, where the difference in distance was so little as to be 

 scarcely perceptible. 



Facts in confirmation of my point I might go on relating almost 

 ad infinitum, but I will content myself with one more, the accuracy 

 of which I can vouch for myself. 



A gamekeeper, in the north of England, had an old bitch, of a 

 cross breed betwen the spaniel and setter, which was well known 

 throughout the country for its uncommon sagacity. His wife having 

 gone one day to work in a field adjoining the house, leaving no one 

 in it but her husband's canine pet, she was surprised by its running 

 up to her while at work, and by seizing hold of her apron, and other 

 significant gestures, endeavouring to draw her towards the house. 

 Being well aware, from the dog's manner, that something had occurred 

 requiring her presence, she hastened to the house, and on entering, 

 found a quantity of clothes which she had placed before the fire 

 enveloped in flames. She was only just in time to extinguish them, 

 and had it not been for the sagacity of the dog, the building would 

 inevitably have been destroyed. Every one must allow that these are 

 striking proofs that the inferior animals do possess reasoning powers 

 in an inferior degree to man, I certainly believe, but still of no very 

 limited or mean grade. 



It may be said that I have confined my arguments principally in 

 favour of the dog ; but if the dog possess intellect, why not the rest 

 of the Animal Kingdom, for it is only, I believe, from the dog being 

 placed in a position of more frequent intercourse with man, that his 

 intellect becomes improved, and superior to that of other animals, 

 and the proofs of it are oftener exhibited and observed ; and if spon- 

 taneously they act with so much apparent judgment, there is no say- 

 ing, by cultivation of their mind (for that they do possess mind I am 



