Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 6.djvu/335

Rh yahoos are violently fond; and when part of these stones is fixed in the earth as it sometimes happens, they will dig with their claws for whole days to get them out; then carry them away, and hide them by heaps in their kennels; but still looking round with great caution, for fear their comrades should find out their treasure. My master said, he could never discover the reason of this unnatural appetite, or how these stones could be of any use to a yahoo; but now he believed it might proceed from the same principle of avarice, which I had ascribed to mankind: That he had once, by way of experiment, privately removed a heap of these stones from the place, where one of his yahoos had buried it: whereupon the sordid animal, missing his treasure, by his loud lamenting, brought the whole herd to the place, there miserably howled, then fell to biting and tearing the rest; began to pine away, would neither eat, nor sleep, nor work, till he ordered a servant privately to convey the stones into the same hole, and hide them as before; which, when his yahoo had found, he presently recovered his spirits, and good humour, but took care to remove them to a better hiding-place, and has ever since been a very serviceable brute.

My master farther assured me, which I also observed myself, that in the fields where the shining stones abound, the fiercest and most frequent battles are fought, occasioned by perpetual inroads of the neighbouring yahoos.

He said, it was common, when two yahoos discovered such a stone in a field, and were contending which of them should be the proprietor, a third would take the advantage, and carry it away from Rh