Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/548

530 accompanied by his raising his head, and throwing it back. I have often, when within the house, on hearing the watch-dog bark in this way. opened the window to assure myself on the subject, and distinguished, as I could not do with the windows closed, the voice of another watch-dog barking in the same way in the distance—the barkings of the two dogs alternating, one answering the other. There is in such cases an evident communication of impressions. One of the dogs, having had his attention aroused by some unusual noise, has transmitted his impression to the other, as sentinels posted at intervals call out their warnings one to another. I have often repeated this observation during the long evenings of winter.

Another example, little known in thickly populated countries, is drawn from a curious scene which I witnessed during a winter passed in Perigord Noir. We had remarked that for several nights the three watch-dogs, a young and an old male and a bitch, howled often toward midnight, but in a peculiar way. One night in particular, during their tedious concert, just as we had got to sleep, they mingled with their cries howlings like those they would have uttered if they had been beaten, with a shading hard to define, but which we perceived plainly; and we remarked that, leaving their kennel in the avenue that led up to the lodge, they had come to close quarters with one another at the gate, with alternating howlings and plaintive cries. Inquiring in the morning for the cause of these singular cries, the peasants told me that a wolf had passed, and predicted that it would return. They said, too, that a neighbor's hunting-bitch had disappeared, and its bones had been found in the fields near a wood. We were awakened again about midnight by the cries of the dogs, and the scene was renewed. Informed as we now were of the nature of what was going on, we ran to one of the windows, whence we could see, in the clear light of the moon, all that passed. The three dogs were cowering against the gate, the oldest one howling by the side of the others, while the younger one and the bitch were exposed at intervals to the attacks of another animal, browner than they, and of about their size, without defending themselves, but moaning as if they were undergoing a vigorous correction.

Frightened, doubtless, by the opening of the blinds of the first story above him, the strange animal had gone away and was sitting in the middle of the road. We could only see that he had straight ears. While we were going down to get a gun the visitor came back to his charge on the dogs, which had begun howling after he left them, and resumed the cries significant of chastisement when they were attacked again. For some reason, perhaps because he heard the click of the gun, the foe drew back and sat down in a garden-walk, concealed by a bunch of