464 
ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 
across for the birds. He first attempted to bring them both, 
but one always struggled out of his mouth : he then laid down 
one intending to bring the other ; but whenever he attempted 
fco cross to me, the bird left fluttered into the water ; he im- 
mediately returned again, laid down the first on the shore and 
recovered the other. The first now fluttered away, but he 
instantly secured it, and, standing over them both, seemed to 
cogitate for a moment ; then, although on any other occasion 
he never ruffles a feather, deliberately killed one, brought over 
the other, and then returned for the dead bird. 
The following, communicated to me by Mr. Blood, is a 
closely analogous, and therefore confirmatory case. He 
was out shooting with a companion, and three wild ducks 
were simultaneously dropped into a lake — one falling dead 
and the other two winged. Mr. Blood sent in his spaniel 
to retrieve, 
and of course when the wounded birds saw her coming they 
swam out, so that she first reached the dead duck. She swam 
up to it, paused for a moment, and passing it went after the 
nearest wounded bird. Having caught this, she again hesitated, 
and apparently after consideration she gave it a chop and let it 
go, quieted for the present. She then caught and brought to 
land the other wounded duck, and going back she again reached 
the dead bird ; but looking at the other and seeing that it was 
again moving, she went out and brought it in, and last of all 
brought the dead bird. The dog was a first-rate retriever and 
never injured game, so that it was an entirely new thing for her 
to kill a bird. 
Again, Mr. Arthur Nicols, in 6 Nature,’ vol. xbs., page 
496, says : — 
Can we conceive any human being reasoning more correctly 
than a dog did in the following instance ] Towards the evening 
of a long day’s snipe- shooting on Dartmoor, the party was 
walking down the bank of the Dart, when my retriever flushed 
a widgeon which fell to my gun in the river, and of course 
instantly dived. I said no word to the dog. He did not 
plunge into the river then , but galloped down stream some fifty 
or sixty yards, and then entered and dashed from side to side — 
it was about twenty or thirty feet wide — working up stream, 
and making a great commotion in the water until he came to 
the place where we stood. Then he landed and shook himself, 
and carefully hunted the near bank a considerable distance 
