CURIOUS HABITS OF DOGS.

THE DOG THAT BURIED THE FROGS.

[Feb. 2, 1895.]

Knowing your love of animals, and the interest so often shown in your columns in their ways, I venture to send you the following story I have lately heard from an eye-witness, and to ask whether you or any of your readers can throw any light upon the dog's probable object. The dog in question was a Scotch terrier. He was one day observed to appear from a corner of the garden carrying in his mouth, very gently and tenderly, a live frog. He proceeded to lay the frog down upon a flower-bed, and at once began to dig a hole in the earth, keeping one eye upon the frog to see that it did not escape. If it went more than a few feet from him, he fetched it back, and then continued his work. Having dug the hole a certain depth, he then laid the frog, still alive, at the bottom of it, and promptly scratched the loose earth back into the hole, and friend froggy was buried alive! The dog then went off to the corner of the garden, and returned with another frog, which he treated in the same way. This occurred on more than one occasion; in fact, as often as he could find frogs he occupied himself in burying them alive. Now dogs generally have some reason for what they do. What can have been a dog's reason for burying frogs alive? It does not appear that he ever dug them up again to provide himself with a meal. If, sir, you or any of your readers can throw any light on this curious, and for the frogs most uncomfortable, behaviour of my friend's Scotch terrier, I should be very much obliged.

R. Acland-Troyte.

AN EXPLANATION.

[Feb. 9, 1895.]

I think I can explain the puzzle of the Scotch terrier and his interment of the frogs, for the satisfaction of your correspondent. A friend of mine had once a retriever who was stung by a bee, and ever afterwards, when the dog found a bee near the ground, she stamped on it, and then scraped earth over it and buried it effectually—presumably to put an end to the danger of further stings. In like manner, another dog having bitten a toad, showed every sign of having found the mouthful to the last degree unpleasant. Probably Mr. Acland-Troyte's dog had, in the same way, bitten a toad, and conceived henceforth that he rendered public service by putting every toad-like creature he saw carefully and gingerly "out of harm's way," underground.

A great number of the buryings and other odd tricks of dogs must, however, I am sure, be considered as Atavism, and traced to the instincts bequeathed by their remote progenitors when yet "wild in the woods the noble beastie ran." Such, I believe, is generally admitted to be the explanation of the universal habit of every dog before lying down to turn round two or three times and scratch its intending bed—even when that bed is of the softest woollen or silk—apparently to ascertain that no snakes or thorns lurk in its sleeping-place.

A dog which I once possessed exhibited such reversion to ancestral habits in a noteworthy way. She was a beautiful white Pomeranian; and when a litter of puppies was impending, on one occasion she scratched an enormous hole in our back-garden in South Kensington, where her leisure hours were passed—a hole like the burrow of a fox. It was not in the least of the character of the ordinary circular punch-bowl so often scooped out by idle or impatient dogs, but a long, deep channel running at a sharp angle a considerable way underground. Obviously, it was Yama's conviction that it was her maternal duty to provide shelter for her expected offspring, precisely as a fox or rabbit must feel it, and as we may suppose her own ancestresses did on the shores of the Baltic some thousand generations ago. When the puppies were born, Yama and the survivor were established by me in a most comfortable kennel in the same garden, with a day nursery and a night nursery (covered and open) for the comfort and safety of the puppy. But one fine morning, when the little creature had begun to crawl over the inclosure of its small domain, I happened to go into the garden while Yama was absent in the house, and discovered that my little friend was missing. The puppy had disappeared altogether; and at the same time I noticed that the flower-bed in which Yama had made her excavation had been nicely smoothed over by the gardener, who was putting the place in order. A suspicion instantly seized me, and I exclaimed, "You have buried my puppy!" I ran to the spot where the hole had been made, and, having swept aside the gardener's spadeful of soil, found the deeper part of the hole, running slanting underground, still open. I knelt down and thrust in my arm to its fullest stretch, and then, at the very end of the hole, my fingers encountered a little soft, warm, fluffy ball. The puppy came out quite happy and uninjured, freshly awakened from sleep, having shown that his instinct recognised the suitability of holes in the ground for the accommodation of puppies; just as the hereditary instinct of his mother had led her to prepare one for him, even in a South Kensington garden!

Frances Power Cobbe.

A DOG AND HIS DINNER.

[Feb. 16, 1895.]

I knew a dog in Ireland—a large retriever—who had been taught always to bring his own tin dish in his mouth, to be filled at the late dinner. For some reason his master wished to make a change, and to feed him twice a day instead of once, to which he had always been accustomed. The dog resented this, and when told to bring his dish, refused, and it could nowhere be found; on which his master spoke angrily to him, and ordered him to bring the dish at once. With drooping tail and sheepish expression he went down the length of the garden, and began scratching up the soil where he had buried the bowl deep down, to avoid having to bring it at an hour of which he did not approve.

A Lover of Dogs.

DOGS AND LOOKING-GLASSES.

[June 23, 1894.]

You are fond of odd actions of dogs, so perhaps the following may be acceptable. I have two fox-terriers—young dogs—Grip and Vic. In the morning, at early tea in our bedroom, Vic gets angry with Grip's reflection in the long glass of the wardrobe, barks at him furiously as he moves about, and scratches at the glass, quite regardless of her own face between her and his reflection. And when he assaults her from behind, to make her play with his real self, she turns round and snaps at him viciously, and then returns to her attack on his reflection. He jumps upon the window-sill, and fancies he sees a squirrel in the garden, and dashes past her to the door; she follows the motion of the reflection till she is past the edge of the glass, and loses it, when she dashes back to the glass again. This has occurred several days in the last week, and seems to me almost absurd. The dogs are just about a year old, and so beyond puppy folly, though very lively and playful still.

A. M. B.