9 ^ 
[February, 
A Defence of the Dog. 
of dog anecdote, to mention some matters which have 
puzzled me with regard to dog knowledge which Mr. Allan’s 
paper does not touch upon or leaves unexplained, in the 
hope that he or some other cynologist may enlighten us. 
The most important and largest problem which it seems 
awaits solution is expressed in the question “ How do 
animals, and notably dogs, cats, and horses, communicate 
ideas, as they unquestionably do, to one another without 
speech ?” I have noticed, as everyone acquainted with 
dogs must often have done, one dog run up to another (a 
familiar friend, of course), and, simply by laying his nose to 
his crony’s, put him in possession of some fadt, idea, or in- 
tention. One could, at any rate, draw no other inference 
from their condudt, seeing that they immediately started off 
together in a most purposeful style, as though resolved and 
unanimous. It was just as though one said to the other, 
for example, “ The gardener’s cat is sitting on the window- 
sill of the toolhouse ; suppose we go and hunt her?” To 
which, to judge by the alacrity of his consent, the other 
seems to reply, “All right, old fellow, with the greatest 
pleasure in life.” Perhaps it may be suggested that, after 
all, this is to make the dialogue unnecessarily elaborate, 
whereas the application of the nose may only have been 
equivalent to a nudge or a wink, meaning, “ Come here, old 
fellow, there’s some fun going.” But I think that, apart 
from the deliberative air the second dog assumes on receiving 
the communication, the other could quite well by a signal 
bark have summoned the other to him. No doubt in this 
particular instance the bark would have spoilt the sport, but 
there must be many others where this objection would not 
apply. Mr. Allan’s view of the “ Dog’s Universe ” certainly 
suggests an answer, although that answer may seem one 
not easily credible. I would state the matter in this way : 
If the outer world expresses itself to the dog’s mind mainly 
in terms of smell (as ours does mainly in terms of sight), and 
if, as seems very possible, his mind correlates these sensa- 
tions so far that his smell-world becomes a whole and not 
a mere series of separate impressions (even as our sight- 
world does to us), does it not seem likely that, even as we 
can express so much diredfly by the eye, although by no 
means shut up to this instrument of expression by reason of 
our gift of language, so the dog may have some faculty of 
expressing himself through the nose. This would, no doubt, 
involve the faculty of emitting a certain odour at will, so as 
to form a code of smell signals. And the incredibility of 
this idea is considerably lessened when we recall the fadt 
