29 AUGUST 1874, Page 16

OUR FOUR-FOOTED FRIENDS.

[TO MB EDITOR OF THB •• seserkrou:]

Sts.,—I see that you welcome all notes of interest upon our fellow- beings, the dogs. Here is one that seems to prove they have a sense of time and of distance as measured by time.

I was walking with my bull-terrier Bully (seven years old last Christmas) during a hot afternoon this month homewards along the Bund (Shanghai), and I suddenly missed him. I turned • back for twenty or thirty yards, and not finding him, I gave up the search, saying, "He knows the way home well enough." Presently I saw him on my right, dripping with water, cantering on ate round pace, without looking about him, homewards. I watched him, curious to see whether he would go straight home. No. He kept on till he reached the distance of about 160 yards, and looked ahead, not smelling the ground. He then deliberately walked back, catching sight of me in about twenty yards after his turning back, and wagged his tale recognisingly. He had evidently been to cool himself in the river (thirty yards to the right, it being low tide), and thinking I would go on at the ordinary pace without him, he, after his bath, struck directly at a long diagonal for the point I would have reached if I had not turned back to look for him. He did not seem to have the slightest misgiving as to his sense of the distance I ought to have walked during the time of his bath. His turning was done seemingly with a calm assurance of cer- tainty. I may add that there were twenty to thirty foot-passengers scattered over the portion of road in question at the time, whose footsteps might have effaced my scent on the watered granite macadamised roadway, even supposing the dog to have tried his sense of smell, which he did not, as far as I could see, and I noticed