The well-known anecdote told of the poet Hogg may be fitly alluded to in this connection. A Scotch collie was able to understand many things that his master said to him, and, as proof of his ability, his master, while in the shepherd’s cottage, said in as calm and natural tone as possible, “I’m thinking the cow’s in the potatoes.” Immediately the dog, which had been lying half asleep on the floor, jumped up, ran into the potato-field, round the house, and up the roof to take a survey; but finding no cow in the potatoes, returned and lay down again. Some little time afterwards his master said as quietly as before, “I’m sure the cow’s in the potatoes,” when the same scene was repeated. But on trying it a third time, the dog only wagged his tail. Similarly, Sir Walter Scott, among other anecdotes of his bull terrier, says:—“The servant at Ashestiel, when laying the cloth for dinner, would say to the dog as he lay on the mat by the fire, ‘Camp, my good fellow, the sheriff’s coming home by the ford,’ or ‘by the hill;’ and the poor animal would immediately go forth to welcome his master, advancing as far and as fast as he was able in the direction indicated by the words addressed to him.” And numberless other anecdotes of the same kind might be quoted.[81] But the most remarkable display of the faculty in question on the part of a brute which has happened to fall under my own observation, is that which many other English naturalists must have noticed in the case of the chimpanzee now in the Zoological Gardens. This ape has learnt from her keeper the meanings of so many words and phrases, that in this respect she resembles a child shortly before it begins to speak. Moreover, it is not only particular words and particular phrases which she has thus learnt to understand; she also understands, to a large extent, the combination of these words and phrases in sentences, so that the keeper is able to explain to the animal what it is that he requests her to do. For example, she will push a straw through any particular meshes in the network of her cage which he may choose successively to indicate by such phrases as—“The one nearest your foot; now the one next the key-hole; now the one above the bar,” &c., &c. Of course there is no pointing to the places thus verbally designated, nor is any order observed in the designation. The animal understands what is meant by the words alone, and this even when a particular mesh is named by the keeper remarking to her the accident of its having a piece of straw already hanging through it.