he had seen the giver eat some of it. We have a very sagacious little Highland terrier, and he in the same manner often refuses a new kind of biscuit or cake until he has seen me bite off a small piece and eat it, and then he will do the same. I have also found our boarhound distrusting food occasionally, and declining to take it from his bowl until I have given him some with my hand. Then he seems to feel that it is all right, and comes down from his bench and eats it. This perhaps is not exactly the same, but it is still a phase of a dog's distrust of unaccustomed food, and his reasoning power respecting it. This wonderful reasoning power any one accustomed to dogs soon discovers.

J. B. G.

DOGS AND LANGUAGE.

DO DOGS UNDERSTAND OUR LANGUAGE?

[Aug. 4, 1883.]

I think the question has been mooted in your columns as to whether dogs sometimes understand our language. A circumstance that has just occurred leads me to think that it does happen, where they are highly organised and living much with their owners. While our family party were sitting over dessert, a cork jumped from an apollinaris-water bottle on the sideboard. I took no notice at first, but after the conversation was ended, I got up and looked about for a few minutes, soon giving up the search. My brother asked what I was looking for, and I answered. I had no sooner sat down than our little dog crept from behind a piece of furniture, where she was reposing on the end of a rug, and went straight up to the cork, looking up at me and pointing to it with her nose. It was near me, but the shadow thrown by the table prevented my seeing it. She is a very nervous little fox-terrier, a most "comfort-loving animal," and spends her life with one or the other of us on my sofa, when her master is out, but hearing his voice at a great distance, and always attending to it.

Anything but a Dog-fancier.

HOW OUR MEANING IS CONVEYED TO ANIMALS.

[Aug. 11, 1883.]

The following anecdote may interest some of your readers:—Some years ago, when starting for a foreign tour, I entrusted my little Scotch terrier, Pixie, to the care of my brother, who lived about three miles distant from my house. I was away for six weeks, during the whole of which time Pixie remained contentedly at his new abode. The day, however, before I returned, my brother mentioned in the dog's hearing that I was expected back the next day. Thereupon, the dog started off, and was found by me at my bedroom door the next morning, he having been seen waiting outside the house early in the morning when the servants got up, and been admitted by them. Pixie is still alive and flourishing, and readily lends himself to experiments, which, however, yield no very definite result. He certainly seems to understand as much of our meaning as it concerns his own comfort to understand, but how he does it I cannot quite determine. I should be sorry to affirm, clever as he is, that he understands French and German, yet it is certainly a fact that he will fall back just as readily if I say "Zurück!" as if I say "To heel!" and advance to the sound "En avant!" as well as to "Hold up!" As in both cases I am careful to avoid any elucidatory gesture or special tone of voice, I am inclined to think that there must be here a species of direct thought transference. At the same time, I am bound to add that without the spoken word I am unable to convey the slightest meaning to him. This, however, may be due to what I believe to be a fact, that it is almost impossible without word or gesture to formulate the will with any distinctness. If this theory be correct, the verbal sounds used would convey the speaker's meaning, not in virtue of the precise sounds themselves, but of the intention put into them by the speaker. I should be glad to know if the experience of others tends to confirm this theory, which I do not remember to have seen suggested before.

A. Eubule-Evans.

[Aug. 18, 1883.]

I beg to contribute another anecdote on the subject of how our meaning is conveyed to animals. When I was in Norway with my husband, a dog belonging to the people of the house went with us in all our walks. One day a strange dog joined us, and seemed to wish to get up a fight with our dog, Fechter, who for protection kept almost under our feet; my husband said several times, "Go on, Fechter," in English, which he immediately did, but soon came back again. At last we succeeded in driving the strange dog away, but he soon returned. Then my husband said without any alteration of tone or gesture that I was aware of, "Drive that dog away, Fechter." He immediately rushed at him, and we saw no more of our troubler. I have long thought that dogs do understand, not "the precise sounds themselves, but the intention put into them by the speaker."

An Observer of Animals.

ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE.

[Aug. 18, 1883.]

Perhaps I should have said the "Intelligence of Animals," but my meaning, in relation to the interesting correspondence in your columns, is no doubt clear. The whole question seems to me to lie in the proverbial nutshell, and to be solvable by the proverbial common sense. Dogs' hearing is undoubtedly very keen and accurate, and even subtle; and dogs have also the power of putting this and that together in a marvellously shrewd and almost rational fashion. They cannot understand sentences, but they get hold of words, i.e., sounds, and keep them pigeon-holed in their memory. I might as well argue moral principle from the fact that my dog Karl, like scores of other dogs, will hold a piece of biscuit on his nose so long as I say "trust," and will when I say "paid for" gaily toss his head and catch the biscuit in his honest mouth, as argue that because he finds eleven tennis-balls among the shrubs in five minutes, when I say, "We can't find them at all, Karl; do go and find them, good dog, will you? Find the balls, old fellow"—therefore he understands my sentence. He simply grasps the words "find" and "balls," sees the game at a standstill, and reasons out our needs and his responsibilities, quickened by the expectation of pattings on the head, pettings, and pieces of biscuit. It is remarkable that if I try to delude him by uttering "base coin" in the shape of words just like the real words, as, for example, if I say "Jacob" instead of "paid for," he makes no mistake, but refuses the morsel, however delicate, till it is "paid for."

Prominent nouns, participles, verbs, &c., make up the lingua franca that so beautifully links together men and dogs, and now and then men and horses, their intelligence being quickened by their dumbness, as is that of deaf and dumb men and women, whose other faculties become so keenly intensified, and who put this and that together so much more quickly than do we who have all our faculties. There are of course "Admiral Crichtons" among dogs, as there are among men, but the difference between dog and dog will generally, I think, be traceable more to human training than to born capacity. The yearning look which Karl gives when (told to "speak") he gives forth his voice in response, is sometimes piteously like "Oh, that I could really tell all I feel!" He is like, and all dogs of average intelligence are like, the Frenchman I met yesterday