x 6 Canine Intelligence. [January, 
a perfect stranger. “ On looking out into the yard,” writes 
my friend, “ the memorable cur was seen enjoying the bone, 
Carlo sitting straight up watching him with a look ot satis- 
faction.” While we may say, therefore, that the pleasures 
aimed at are in the main personal, that the objeCt ot action 
is for the most part self-gratification, we cannot say that tne 
pleasure is entirely personal or that self-gratification is tne 
only objedt of aCtion. f 
And with regard to the other point,— the postponement ot 
aCtion, — How far, it may be asked, has the dog the power 
of working now for a result in the future ? This power, we 
must remember, is one of the main characteristics of civilised 
man. Man has the gift of self-restraint. A stimulus is 
received which prompts to immediate aCtion, but the action 
is repressed or postponed. Present pain is cheerfully borne 
for the good results which are to follow. In savages and 
young children the power of restraint is not developed ; they 
are impulsive. Immediate result is what they look to ; to 
wait is misery. In the brute this power of waiting is still 
less developed, but it is not absent. A dog with a thorn in 
his foot will limp up to his master to have it extracted, 
though he knows that the process will be painful ; he bears 
present pain for future ease. Mr. Romanes relates an anec- 
dote which affords a good example of postponement of aCtion. 
A black retriever was asleep, or apparently asleep, in the 
kitchen of a certain dignitary of the church. The cook, 
who had just trussed a turkey for roasting, was suddenly 
called away. During her temporary absence “ the dog 
carried off the turkey to the garden, deposited it in a hollow 
tree, and at once returned to resume his place by the fire, 
where he pretended to be asleep as before.” Unfortunately 
a perfidious gardener had watched him, and brought back 
the turkey, so that the retriever did not enjoy the feast he 
had reserved for a quiet and undisturbed moment. 
A dog can also bide his time, and defer aCtion to a more 
convenient season. And such postponement of aCtion is a 
sign of developed intelligence ; for it would seem to have 
been the original intention of Nature, so to speak, that 
stimulus should at once give rise to aCtion. This is, in all 
probability, always the case with creatures low down in the 
scale of being ; but as we rise in that scale, and as a central 
nervous system is more fully developed, a larger and larger 
traCt of processes, accompanied by consciousness, separates 
stimulus from response. And now in man, and the animals 
which come nearest to man in intelligence, a great body of 
stimuli constantly received never pass into aCtion at all. 
