148 
ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE* 
highest level of intelligence to which the animal nndet 
consideration can certainly be said to attain. But in 
order that any who read these pages for the sake of the 
anecdotes which they necessarily present may not be 
disappointed by meeting with cases already known to 
them, I shall draw my material mainly from the facts 
communicated to me by private correspondents, alluding 
to previously published facts only as supplementary to 
those now published for the first time. It may be well 
to explain to my numerous correspondents that I select 
the following cases for quoting, not because they are the 
most sensational that I have received, but rather because 
they either contain nothing sufficiently exceptional to 
excite the criticism of incredulity, or because they happen 
to have been corroborated by the more or less similar 
cases which I quote from other correspondents. 
As showing the high general intelligence of the dog, 
I shall first begin with the collie. It is certain that many 
of these dogs can be trusted to gather and drive sheep 
without supervision. It is enough on this head to refer 
to the well-known anecdotes of the poet Hogg in his 
6 Shepherd’s Calendar,’ concerning his dog ‘ Sirrah.’ 
Williams, in his book on 6 Dogs and their Ways,’ says 
(p. 124) that a friend of his had a collie which, whenever 
his master said the words 6 Cast, cast,’ would run off to 
seek any sheep that might be cast, and on finding it would 
at once assist it to rise. He also knew of another dog 
(p. 102), which would perform the same office even in the 
absence of his master, going the round of the fields and 
pastures by himself to right all the sheep that he found 
to be cast. 1 
One of my correspondents (Mr. Laurie Gentles) sends 
me an account of a sheep-dog belonging to a friend of his 
(Mr. Mitchell, of Inverness-shire) which strayed to a neigh- 
bouring farm, and took up his residence with the farmer. 
On the second night after the dog arrived at the farm 
the farmer Hook the dog down to the meadow to see if 
the cattle were all right. To his dismay he found that 
1 For many other instances of sheep-dog sagacity, see Watson, 
Reasoning Povdr-r of Animals , under ‘ Shepherd’s Dog.’ 
