I think the question has been mooted in your columns as to whether dogs sometimes understand our language. A circumstance that has just occurred leads me to think that it does happen, where they are highly organised and living much with their owners. While our family party were sitting over dessert, a cork jumped from an apollinaris-water bottle on the sideboard. I took no notice at first, but after the conversation was ended, I got up and looked about for a few minutes, soon giving up the search. My brother asked what I was looking for, and I answered. I had no sooner sat down than our little dog crept from behind a piece of furniture, where she was reposing on the end of a rug, and went straight up to the cork, looking up at me and pointing to it with her nose. It was near me, but the shadow thrown by the table prevented my seeing it. She is a very nervous little fox-terrier, a most "comfort-loving animal," and spends her life with one or the other of us on my sofa, when her master is out, but hearing his voice at a great distance, and always attending to it. ANYTHING BUT A DOG-FANCIER. HOW OUR MEANING IS CONVEYED TO ANIMALS. [_Aug. 11, 1883._] The following anecdote may interest some of your readers:--Some years ago, when starting for a foreign tour, I entrusted my little Scotch terrier, Pixie, to the care of my brother, who lived about three miles distant from my house. I was away for six weeks, during the whole of which time Pixie remained contentedly at his new abode. The day, however, before I returned, my brother mentioned in the dog's hearing that I was expected back the next day. Thereupon, the dog started off, and was found by me at my bedroom door the next morning, he having been seen waiting outside the house early in the morning when the servants got up, and been admitted by them. Pixie is still alive and flourishing, and readily lends himself to experiments, which, however, yield no very definite result. He certainly seems to understand as much of our meaning as it concerns his own comfort to understand, but how he does it I cannot quite determine. I should be sorry to affirm, clever as he is, that he understands French and German, yet it is certainly a fact that he will fall back just as readily if I say "Zurück!" as if I say "To heel!" and advance to the sound "En avant!" as well as to "Hold up!" As in both cases I am careful to avoid any elucidatory gesture or special tone of voice, I am inclined to think that there must be here a species of direct thought transference. At the same time, I am bound to add that without the spoken word I am unable to convey the slightest meaning to him. This, however, may be due to what I believe to be a fact, that it is almost impossible without word or gesture to formulate the will with any distinctness. If this theory be correct, the verbal sounds used would convey the speaker's meaning, not in virtue of the precise sounds