SPITE OF ITS
DOMESTICATION, HAS AN AGILE BODY AND A QUICK, ALERT MIND.]

No one denies that animals are capable of distinguishing relative sizes
and even quantities. They are not so skilled as the average human being
in making these distinctions, yet when mentally compared to the state of
Bushmen, Tasmanians, and Veddahs, who can count only two, and call it
many, there is not such a vast gulf between them and mankind.

The zebu, or sacred bull of India, shows his mathematical qualities to a
pronounced degree. When he grows attached to a small group of his kin,
he will often refuse to leave them unless the entire group accompany
him. When driven from his pen, if by chance one of his party is left
behind he refuses to go--thus indicating that he is able to tell that
the exact number is not with him. His affectionate and gentle
disposition, not to mention his love of his offspring, would entitle him
to rank among the most human of animals. No wonder he is worshipped in
India, where the human side of animal life is understood and appreciated
to a degree quite unknown to the Western world!

The fox and the wolf, and even the coyote, can readily distinguish
whether a herd of sheep or cattle is guarded by three or four dogs, and
whether there is one herdsman or two. They cannot tell the exact number
of sheep, however; neither could a man without first counting them.
Their knowledge of geometry is remarkable. They can orient themselves to
the surrounding woods, measure distances, figure out the safest way of
escape, and the power of the enemy even better than savage man. Yet in
most of these problems, definite notions of number or figures have
little part. A dog, when hunting, for example, on a prairie where he has
to leap over ditches or quickly turn around a large tree, is able by a
second's thought to do so without danger. He clears the wire fence,
leaps the ditch, dashes through a closing gate, or escapes an infuriated
enemy at a moment's notice. This natural wisdom is exercised
spontaneously in him, it is the result of inborn theorems of which he
may not even be aware, but which he uses with a sureness that defies the
book-learning of all our teachers of mathematics. He uses speed, force,
space, mass, and time with so small an effort, and by the quickest and
shortest routes.

Suppose a wolf or a wild hog could not tell how many dogs were attacking
it? There would be no way for it to defend itself. If four dogs attack
i