Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 22.djvu/265

Rh and dangerous hatred for the skinner, who took away his meats. Another dog, which was fed together with a hog, took such aversion toward his commensal, that he broke his chain, jumped upon the porker, killed, disemboweled, and tore it.

Man has sometimes taken pains to develop the destructive instinct of animals. Jacolliot tells of elephants that were fed with meat to keep this faculty in a state of excitation. The Hottentots train cattle in a similar way. A legend runs to the effect that an exiled king of Garamanta returned to his country with an army of two hundred dogs. It is said, also, that when the Cimbri were defeated their dogs defended their chariots. The city of St. Malo is said to have been defended once in a similar manner; and during the night the animals were let loose in the streets as a kind of police. At the camp of Lobau, during the campaign in Italy, the soldiers trained large dogs to take prisoners. Watchmen in some prisons are accompanied in their night-rounds by dogs, to detect the prisoners who are out of their beds.

—Though less susceptible than man, animals are very fond of praise and approbation. With what intoxication of joy does the dog receive our commendations! Every one has remarked how sensible horses are to marks of affection, and how they exert themselves in races so as not to allow a rival to pass them. Pierquin had a monkey which, when a handkerchief was given it, draped itself in it, and manifested an extraordinary pleasure in watching the train of its court-robe. Napoleon believed that man was only a more perfect animal, and claimed for his horse memory, intelligence, and love. "I had a horse," he said, "which could recognize me among all the world, and which showed, by his prancing and his proud step when I was on his back, that he knew he was carrying a person superior to all the others around him. He would not allow any one else to ride him except a groom who regularly took care of him, and his movements, when that man was upon him, were so peculiar that he seemed aware that he was carrying a servant." This was perhaps the same animal of which Constant wrote in his "Memoirs": "The Emperor had for several years an Arabian horse of rare instincts, that gave him much pleasure. It was hard to discover any grace in him while his master was out of sight, but whenever he heard the drums announcing the presence of his Majesty he would raise himself in pride, shake his head, paw the ground, and from that moment till the Emperor dismounted from him he would carry as fine a head as ever was seen." Such vanity is, in fact, quite common among Arabian horses, and the treatment they receive is well adapted to develop it. It is comprehensible that, under the influence of this instinct, and the jealousy that often results from it, animals may become malicious and quarrelsome, and attack and even kill their companions. It has been