Note GM — Chapter IX · MENTAL PROCESSES IN ANIMALS: THEIR POWERS OF PERCEPTION AND INTELLIGENCE.

Mr. Romanes also says ("Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 235), "This abstract idea of ownership is well developed in many if not in most dogs." By an abstract idea of ownership I understand a conception of ownership which, to modify Mr. Romanes's phrase, is quite apart from any objects or persons of which such ownership happens to be characteristic. Even if we believe that a dog can regard this or that man as his owner, or this or that object as his master's property, still even this seems to me a very different thing from his possessing an abstract idea of ownership.