Page:Dick Sands the Boy Captain.djvu/79

 A WHALE IN SIGHT. 6l of the glottis, the aperture'at the top of the windpipe, was adapted for the émission of regular sounds : of course the animal attached no meaning to the words it uttered any more than a parrot or a jay can comprehend their own chatterings. Thus, unconscîously, Dingo had become the hero of the hour. On several separate occasions Captain Hull repeated the experiment of spreading out the blocks before him, but invariably with the same resuit ; the dog never failed, without the slightest hésitation, to pick out the two letters, leaving ail the rest of the alphabet quite unnoticed. Cousin Benedict alone, somewhat ostentatiously, pro- fessed to take no interest in the circumstance. " You cannot suppose," he said to Captain Hull, after various répétitions of the trick, "that dogs are to be reckoned the only animais endowed with intelligence Rats, you know, will always leave a sinking ship, and beavers învariably raise thcir dams before the approach of a flood. Dîd not the horses of Nicomedes, Scanderberg and Oppian die of grief for the loss of their masters ? Hâve there not been instances of donkeys with wonderful memo- ries ? Birds, too, hâve been trained to do the most remarkable things ; they hâve been taught to write word after word at their master's dictation ; there are cockatoos who can count the people in a room as accurately as a mathematician ; and haven't you heard of the old Cardinal's parrot that he would not part with for a hundred gold crowns because it could repeat the Apostles' creed from beginnîng to end without a blunder ? And insects," he continued, warming into enthusiasm, "how marvellously they vindicate the axiom — Are not the structures of ants the very models for the architects of a city ? Has the diving-bell of the aquatic argyroneta ever been surpassed by the invention of the most skilful student of mechanical art ? And cannot fleas go through a drill and fire a gun as well as the most accomplished artiJJeryman ? This Dingo is tvoVvtv^ oiX
 * In miiiimis maxtmus Dcus ! *