worse, nightly concerts.  Strange beasts! what can they have meant by this howling?  One began, then two, then a few more, and, finally, the whole hundred.  As a rule, during a concert like this they sit well down, stretch their heads as high in the air as they can, and howl to their hearts’ content.  During this act they seem very preoccupied, and are not easily disturbed.  But the strangest thing is the way the concert comes to an end.  It stops suddenly along the whole line —­ no stragglers, no “one cheer more.”  What is it that imposes this simultaneous stop?  I have observed and studied it time after time without result.  One would think it was a song that had been learnt.  Do these animals possess a power of communicating with each other?  The question is extraordinarily interesting.  No one among us, who has had long acquaintance with Eskimo dogs, doubts that they have this power.  I learned at last to understand their different sounds so well that I could tell by their voices what was going on without seeing them.  Fighting, play, love-making, etc., each had its special sound.  If they wanted to express their devotion and affection for their master, they would do it in a quite different way.  If one of them was doing something wrong —­ something they knew they were not allowed to do, such as breaking into a meat-store, for example —­ the others, who could not get in, ran out and gave vent to a sound quite different from those I have mentioned.  I believe most of us learned to distinguish these different sounds.  There can hardly be a more interesting animal to observe, or one that offers greater variety of study, than the Eskimo dog.  From his ancestor the wolf he has inherited the instinct of self-preservation —­ the right of the stronger —­ in a far higher degree than our domestic dog.  The struggle for life has brought him to early maturity, and given him such qualities as frugality and endurance in an altogether surprising degree.  His intelligence is sharp, clear, and well developed for the work he is born to, and the conditions in which he is brought up.  We must not call the Eskimo dog slow to learn because he cannot sit up and take sugar when he is told; these are things so widely separated from the serious business of his life that he will never be able to understand them, or only with great difficulty.  Among themselves the right of the stronger is the only law.  The strongest rules, and does as he pleases undisputedly; everything belongs to him.  The weaker ones get the crumbs.  Friendship easily springs up between these animals —­ always combined with respect and fear of the stronger.  The weaker, with his instinct of self-preservation, seeks the protection of the stronger.  The stronger accepts the position of protector, and thereby secures a trusty helper, always with the thought of one stronger than himself.  The instinct of self-preservation is to be found everywhere, and it is so, too, with their relations with man.