ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 
160 
I myself know a large dog in Germany which used to 
kill snakes by dexterously tossing them in the air a great 
number of times, too quickly to admit of the snake biting. 
When the snake was thus quite confused, the dog would 
tear it in pieces. This dog can never have been poisoned 
by the bite of a snake ; but he seems to have had an 
instinctive idea that the snake might be more harmful in 
its bite than other animals ; for while he was bold in 
fighting with dogs, and did not then object to receiving his 
fair share of laceration, he was extremely careful never to 
begin to tear a snake till he had thoroughly bewildered it 
by tossing it as described. 
The reasoning displayed by dogs may not always be of 
a high order, but little incidents, from being of constant 
occurrence among all dogs, are the more important as 
showing the reasoning faculty to be general to these 
animals. I shall therefore give a few cases to show the 
kind of reasoning that is of constant occurrence. 
Mr. Stone writes to me from Norbury Park concerning 
two of his dogs, one large and the other small. Both 
being in a room at the same time, 
one of them, the larger, had a bone, and when he had left 
it the smaller dog went to take it, the larger one growled, and 
the other retired to a corner. Shortly afterwards the larger 
dog went out, but the other did not appear to notice this, and at 
any rate did not move. A few minutes later the large dog was 
heard to bark out of doors ; the little dog then, without a 
moment’s hesitation, went straight to the bone and took it. It 
thus appears quite evident that she reasoned — 4 That dog is 
barking out of doors, therefore he is not in this room, therefore 
it is safe for me to take the bone.’ The action was so rapid as 
to be clearly a consequence of the other dog’s barking. 
Again, Mr. John Le Conte, writing from the Uni- 
versity of California, tells me of a dog which used to 
hunt rabbits in an extensive pasture-ground where there 
was a hollow tree, which frequently served as a place of 
refuge for the rabbits when they were pressed : — 
On one occasion a rabbit was 4 started,’ and all of the 
dogs, with the exception of 4 Bonus/ dashed off in full pursuit. 
We were astonished to observe that the sedate 4 Bonus/ fore- 
