room which was used occasionally as a barn and
apple-chamber, into which the fowls sometimes found their way; and, in
scratching among the chaff, scattered the dust on the pans of milk
below, to the great annoyance of my mother-in-law. In this a favourite
cock of hers was the chief transgressor. One day in harvest she went
into the dairy, followed by the little dog, and finding dust again on
her milk-pans, she exclaimed, 'I wish that cock were dead!' Not long
after, she being with us in the harvest field, we observed the little
dog dragging along the cock, just killed, which, with an air of triumph,
he laid at my mother-in-law's feet. Highly exasperated at the literal
fulfilment of her hastily-uttered wish, she snatched a stick from the
hedge, and attempted to give the dog a beating. The luckless animal,
seeing the reception he was likely to meet with, where he expected marks
of approbation, left the bird and ran off, she brandishing her stick,
and saying, in a loud angry tone, 'I'll pay thee for this by and by.' In
the evening, when about to put her threat into execution, she found the
little dog established in a corner of the room, and the large one
standing before it. Endeavouring to fulfil her intention by first
driving off the large dog, he gave her plainly to understand that he was
not at all disposed to relinquish his post. She then sought to get at
the small dog behind the other, but the threatening gesture, and fiercer
growl of the large one, sufficiently indicated that the attempt would be
not a little perilous. The result was that she was obliged to abandon
her design. In killing the cock I can scarcely think that the dog
understood the precise import of my stepmother's wish, as his immediate
execution of it would seem to imply. The cock was a more recent
favourite, and had received some attentions which had previously been
bestowed upon himself. This, I think, had led him to entertain a feeling
of hostility to the bird, which he did not presume to indulge, until my
mother's tone and manner indicated that the cock was no longer under her
protection. In the power of communicating with each other, which these
dogs evidently possess, and which, in some instances, has been displayed
by other species of animals, a faculty seems to be developed of which we
know very little. On the whole, I never remember to have met with a case
in which to human appearance there was a nearer approach to moral
perception than in that