A DOG'S SETTING.
A neighbour, who among many other activities, has a little holding, takes his spaniel every Sunday morning with him to collect the hens eggs. He kept a record, which disclosed the strange statistical fact that some of the hens apparently took a rest on Sunday. On a recent Sunday morning, soon after he had noticed the Sunday dearth, he had occasion to slap his spaniel for disobedience ; and out of its mouth fell a perfectly good hen's egg. He took no apparent notice but watched. The dog picked up the egg, again without damaging it, and slipped off with it to a corner of the field ; and there a little later the smallholder found a cache of fourteen unbroken eggs. Since foxes, rats and stoats can all carry off eggs without damaging them and some dogs are trained to collect eggs the gentleness of the dog's mouth is not to be wondered at ; but the storing of such food in one place is new in my experi- ence of dogs. The nearest parallel in my memory is a tale, alleged to be true, of a toy dog who used to steal eggs and make a collection of the shells in the big dog's kennel !
W. BEACH THOMAS.
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