The Northern Pacific farmer. [volume] (Wadena, Minn.) 1878-1885, 1880-11-11
How the Dog Knows.
Harper's Weekly.

IL VIC CuI Op0l1 Cl1c 1lctN VI d HILL,
we shall find in it large and highly
developed optic centre, directly cen
nected with the eye and the nerves of
sight, and having numerous side con-
nections with other parts of the brain.
The large nervous mass accurately re-
fleets the extreme Importance of sight
in the human system. Our world is
mainly world of visible objects, cor
rected and interpreted by the indica-
lions of our sense of touch and of mus
cular activity. We think of things
chiefly as We see them, and very little
as we smell them or taste them. Ac-
cordingly we find that in man the
olfactory lobes, which stand to the
sense of smell in the same relation as
the optic centres stand to the sense of
sight, are small and inconspicuous.
They have apparently but few connec-
tons with other parts of the brain, and
they do not answer to any large and
important associations of ideas. We
find our consciousness of smells is
merely isolated, while our conscious
ness of sights is continuous and closely
interviewer with all our thinking. Forms
and colors, actual and ideal, make up
the greater part of our material uni
verse. When we think of Paris, or of
Switzerland, or Of our friend Jones, our
ideas are mostly ideas of their visible
aspect, and very little suspicion of any
other sense than sight enters into our
mental picture,
On the other hand, if we cut open
the head of dog, we find a large and
developed optic centre, much the
same as mans; but we also find very
big and very important olfactory lobe,
having an immense number of lateral
connections with every other part of
the brain. The dogs nose is an organ
almost, if not quite, as important to
him as his eyes, and entirely analogous
to our own fingers. Ifyou and I see
any object which we do not know, and
if we are anxious to learn more about
its nature, we go up to it and handle it.
But if my dog Anacharsis sees any
thing of the same sort, he can not
handle it, so he smells it in
stead. When he has carefully shifted
at it all round, and compared the smell
with all similar or contrasting smells in
his wellstored memory, he k,aors the
object, just as you and 1 do when we
have handled it. He may then pro-
coed to tear it with his teeth, or to wor-
ry it, or to leave it disdainfully alone
80 thing not worthy bis exalted no.
tice. But the essential acts in his cog
milton of it are the seeing and the
smelling, just as with us they are see
ing and the handling. Note, too, that
while sight in both cases supplies US with
what we may call distant information
about the object, it is smell in the dog,
or handling in ourselves, which gives
us the ultimate and final knowledg &c OF
what the thing is in itself-of its inner
and intimate nature. If Macbeth sees
an airy dagger, we ask him whether
he can grasp it also; dog, under SINH
lar circumstances, would go up and
take sniff att. Som etimes Anachar-
sis is taken in for moment by his
eyes, like all the rest of us; but when
he has made an olfactory examination
of the doubtful object, his mind is set
at rest Immediately. A feather moving
in the breeze often imposes upon him
! for a moment, until sniff reveals the
fact that it is dead feather only, and
not living butterfly.
Dogs not only smell odors in an oc-
casional way, but they likewise seem
to extrect recognizable odor from al
most everything, as Professor Groom
Robertson also suggests. Anacharsis
knows me, when I am dressed in
clothes he never saw before, by his
nose alone. Let me get myself up in a
theatrical costume, and cover my face
with a mask, yet he will recognize me
at once by some, to us, undiscoverable
perfume. Moreover, he will recognize
the same odor as clinging to my
clothes after they have been taken off
If shy pebble on the beach, he car
pick out that identical pebble by scent
amongst thousand others. Even the
very ground on which ] have trodder
retains for him some faint memento Of
my presence for hours afterward
The bloodhound can track human
scent week cid, which argues delicacy
of nose almost incredible to human
nostrils. Similarly, too, if you watch
Anacharsis at this moment, you viii
see that he runs up and down the path
shifting away at every stick, stone, and
plant, as though he got separate anG
distinguishable scent out of every one
of them. And so he must, no doubt
for if even the earth keeps a perfume
Of the person who has walked over il
hours before, surely every object about
us must have some faint smell or 9th
er, either of itself or of objects which
have touched it. When we remember
that single grain of musk will scent
hundreds of handkerchiefs So as to be
recognizable even by our defective or
gans of smell, there is nothing extrav
agant in the idea that passing creature:
may leave traces, discoverable by keen
er senses, on all the pebbles or straw
which lie across the road. Thus thu