404 Animal Life and Intelligence. 



reported by Arago the astronomer.* This dog refused, 

 with bared teeth, to enter out of his turn the drum by the 

 revolution of which the spit was rotated. M. Arago, for 

 whom the pullet on the spit was being dressed, requested 

 that the dog's companion, after turning the spit for a short 

 time, should be released. Whereupon the dog who had 

 before been so refractory seemed satisfied that his turn for 

 drudgery had come, and, entering the wheel of his own 

 accord, began without hesitation to turn it as usual. Many 

 will be prepared to maintain that dogs resent unjust 

 chastisement. A gentleman I met near Eio de Janeiro 

 possessed a dog whose sensitiveness was such that, after 

 a reproof, he would leave the house, and sometimes not 

 return for several days. His owner assured me of his 

 belief that in such cases the reproof had always been un- 

 deserved ; and he told me of one definite instance in which 

 the reproof — never more than verbal — had been for a theft 

 which was afterwards found to have been committed by his 

 garden-boy. On this occasion the dog was away for three 

 days, and returned in a wretched and miserable condition. 

 What shall we say of such cases ? Seeing how complex is 

 what we call a sense of justice, I am not prepared to credit 

 the dog therewith ; and I am disposed to regard such 

 actions as I have just described as the result of a breach 

 of normal association. Dogs, like men, are creatures of 

 habit ; and breaches of normal association — occurrences 

 contrary to expectation — give rise to uneasiness, dissatisfac- 

 tion, and consequent resentment. 



Conversely, many of the cases where dogs and other 

 animals are said to know when they have done wrong, and 

 to suffer the pricks of conscience, may probably be satis- 

 factorily explained by association. When my friend, coming 

 down into his drawing-room, sees Tim's "guilty" look, he 

 suspects that the dog has, contrary to rule, been taking a 

 nap on one of the chairs ; and his suspicions are not a 

 little strengthened by the unnatural warmth of the easiest 

 armchair. " Ah ! Tim always knows when he has done 



* "Animal Intelligence," p. 443. 



