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guided, first by their sensations, and next by their experience, just like men. It is certain that they can change their habits and practices with a change of circumstances and situation, just like men. It is true that they can change them only to a certain extent; and this, also, is just like men. Instincts are impulses and aptitudes operating without previous suggestion either of experience or reason. Now instincts, thus defined, have place in men, no less than in the inferior animals; and in the inferior animals no more than in mankind; but the immeasurable advantages of the latter, under all other aspects, and as compared with even the most sagacious of their inferiors, enables them to raise so vast a superstructure upon their instincts, and as it were, to throw them so much out of sight; that, at last, they are prone to forget, both that they have themselves any instincts at all, and that the inferior animals have any thing in addition."

Mr. Paulett having thus explained himself a little, as to his notions of instinct, and of its equal distribution, and no more, among men and the inferior animals; afterward mentioned, in the course of the conversation as it followed, several anecdotes of such animals (birds, beasts, fishes, and even reptiles), as examples of the truths of which he professed himself the advocate.

"The capacity observable in numerous species of animals," said he, " to receive new ideas, and to adopt new modes of conduct, from their experience of and with mankind, are conspicuous proofs (among many others) of the respectable amount of their understanding. Of examples of these kinds, in the horse and dog, and in nearly all the several kinds of game, every sportsman is able to furnish us with the most striking,

and those in considerable numbers; but the list is capable of being extended, so as to include many animals with which we have no ordinary intercourse, and which yet readily mould themselves to it, when, through some singular circumstance, they and men are brought together. There must assuredly be a latent sympathy subsisting between all living creatures whatever; though brought, for the most part, so rarely into view!"

"Speculations," said Mr. Gubbins, "have sometimes been entertained, as to the ideas which the inferior animals form to themselves of mankind, and of the causes of that confession of superiority which they plainly make in our favour. It is no uncommon opinion, that the eyes of the horse and dog are so constructed, that men appear to them much larger than they really are; and that hence we are to account for the readiness of their obedience?"

"I have heard that story," replied Mr. Paulett, "not only from children, but from men engaged in the care of animals, and therefore familiar with their ways; but I am ashamed to think that any thing so silly should ever have entered the human mind. The horse and dog have acute or intense powers of vision; this has been observed by their human superiors; and many curious fables, relating to both species of animal (but of which, at present, I shall say no more), have been founded upon the distinction; but that, though they see piercingly, they see things no larger than we see them ourselves, is what the slightest reflection, and the slightest observation, ought to convince us of! How could a man and a horse or dog live and act together, if objects appeared to the man and the beast of different sizes? In what predicament would be the

man, with his horse or dog, if the smallest gap in a hedge or paling, or the lowest gateway of a building, appeared to either of the latter a spacious or lofty opening? On horseback, how often would not the man be jammed between two friendly posts, which his horse esteemed to stand some yards apart; or stunned by the blow of his head against the lintel of a door, which, to his horse, seemed elevated to the chimneys? Or, putting the man out of the question, what mistakes should we not see dogs and horses daily com mit, if their eyes showed them things differently and larger than our own; to-day, the horse attempting to enter the door of a dog-kennel, or of a hen-roost, as freely as that of his stable; and, to-morrow, a dog preparing to swim over a rill, all the water of which were scarcely sufficient for him to lap! But fantastic explanations, such as these to which we are referring, are all to be ascribed to one common error; that of refusing to allow to animals their real powers, and then supposing them to have imaginary ones! Depend upon it, that at least the dog and horse, and a large proportion of other animals, see things as we see them ourselves, though with various intensities of vision; and are affected by them in the same manner. But, this admitted, it is the intelligence, and not the corporeal bulk, which they see, and of which they feel the mental effect, in the eye and carriage of the human species, which subdues and even wins them; just as, with ourselves, it is the eye and general physiognomy and deportment of a man or inferior animal which mentally affects us, far more than the dimensions of the body."

"You are in the right, sir," said Mr. Gubbins.

"And this brings me," continued Mr. Paulett, "to

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the notions which animals may entertain of men. suppose them to see, in all men, animals that are intellectually, and therefore substantially and effectually, their superiors; and animals, also, which, from the additional force of the general sympathies, gain, under different circumstances, their confidence and fear, and love."

"The ancient story, therefore, may be a true one," said Mr. Gubbins, "of the lion which came to the slave, to have a thorn taken out of his foot?"

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Yes; and that also," returned Mr. Paulett, the lioness which, in the woods of Africa, came to the sailor, to recover her cub from the ape."

"I am unacquainted with this latter story," said Mr. Gubbins?

"A seaman belonging to the wood-party of a ship upon the coast of Africa, had straggled with his companions, and was using his axe freely in the woods, when a large lioness approached him, face to face. The man, for the first moments, gave himself up for lost; but, very soon afterward, he began to perceive that the manner and expression of countenance of the lioness was mild, and even mournful, and that he had no danger to apprehend from her. She looked at him, and then behind her, and upward into the trees; and went a few steps from him, upon the path by which she came; and then returned, and then went again; and acted, in short, much as a dog would act, that wished you to follow him. The seaman yielded to her obvious desire; and she led him some little distance, till, near the foot of a tall tree, she stopped, and looked up, with plaintive cries, into its branches. The seaman, directed by her eyes and gestures, looked upward also, and soon discovered, at a considerable height, an

ape, dandling and playing with a cub lion, which he had carried thither for his amusement. The wants and wishes of the lioness were now easily understood. The lion species, though usually reckoned among the species of cat, differ absolutely from it in this, as in many other particulars, that it cannot ascend a tree; a distinction, by the way, which ought to satisfy us, at once, of the error of those who talk to us of lions in America, where, in reality, there is no lion; and where the puma and jaguar, which they call lions, so readily ascend a tree. But equally in vain would it have been for the sailor to climb after the cub; for the ape, at the best, would have enjoyed the frolic of leaping, with his plaything, from branch to branch, or from tree to tree, as he approached. The only chance, therefore, was to fell the tree, before the ape, seated near its top, should have the sagacity to provide against the effect of the strokes of the axe at its bottom. To work, therefore, he went; the lioness, which had seen other trees fallen by the axe of the stranger, standing by, and impatiently waiting the event. The ape kept his seat till the tree fell, and then fell with it; and the lioness, the moment the robber reached the ground, sprang upon him with the swiftness and sureness of a cat springing upon a mouse; killed him; and, then, taking her cub in her mouth, walked contentedly away from the benefactor to whose skill and friendly assistance she had made her sorrowful appeal!"

"I can so much the more readily," observed Mr. Gubbins, "believe that even wild animals should put faith in the skill and helping disposition of mankind; as I have myself met with a few striking examples of that faith and expectation in domesticated species, to

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