that other question to which allusion has been made. The dog has a
body as well as a soul, senses, appetites, and instincts, and it
is worth while inquiring whether contact with man has had the same
ameliorating effect on these as it is supposed to have had on his
psychical faculties. In other words, has he ceased to be a jackal? For
if a negative answer must be given, it follows that, however fit to
be the servant, the dog is scarcely fit to be the intimate associate
and friend of man; for friendship implies a similarity in habits, if
nothing more, and man is not by nature an unclean animal.
Dr. Romanes, in his work on _Mental Evolution in Animals_, speaks of
what he calls unpleasant survivals in the dog, such as burying food
until it becomes offensive before eating it, turning round and round
on the hearth-rug before lying down, rolling in filth, etc., etc., and
he says that they have remained unaffected by contact with man because
these instincts being neither useful nor harmful have never been either
cultivated or repressed. From which it may be inferred that in his
opinion these disagreeable habits may be got rid of in time. But why
does he call them survivals? If the action, so frequently observed in
the dog, of turning round several times before lying down, is correctly
ascribed to an ancient habit in the wild animal of treading down the
grass to make a bed to sleep on, it is rightly called a survival,
and is a habit neither useful nor harmful in the domesticated state,
which has never been either cultivated or repressed, and will in
time disappear. Thus far it is easy to agree with Dr. Romanes. The
other offensive instinct of the dog, of which burying meat to make it
putrid, rolling in filth, etc., etc., are different manifestations, is
not a survival, in the sense in which zoologists use that word, any
more than the desire of the well-fed cat for the canary, and of the
hen-hatched ducklings for the pond, are survivals. These are important
instincts which have never ceased to operate. The dog is a flesh-eater
with a preference for carrion, and his senses of taste and smell
are correlated, and carrion attracts him just as fruit attracts the
frugivorous bat. Man’s smelling sense and the dog’s do not correspond;
they are inverted, and what is delightful to one is disgusting to the
other. “A cur’s tail may be warmed and pressed and bound round with
ligatures, and after twelve years of labour bestowed on it, it will
retain its original form,” is an Oriental saying. In like manner the
dog may be shut up in an atmosphere of opoponax and frangipani for
twelve hundred years and he will love the smell of carrion still.
When the dog runs frisking and barking, he expresses gladness; and he
expresses a still greater degree of gladness by madly rolling, feet
up, on the grass, uttering a continuous purring growl. The discovery
of a carrion smell on the grass will always cause the dog to behave in
this way. It is the something wanting still in the life of enforced
separation from the odours that delight him; and when he unexpectedly
discovers a thing of this kind his joy is uncontrolled. His sense of
smell is much keener than ours; it is probably more to him than sight
is to us; he lives in it, and the odours that are agreeable to him
afford him the highest pleasure of which he is capable. We can do much
with a dog, but there is a limit to what we can do; we can no more
alter the character of his sense of smell than we can alter the colour
of his blood.
“The dog is a worshipper of man,” says Dr. Lauder Lindsay, “and is,
or may be, made in the image of the being he worships.” That refers
merely to the animal’s intellectual and moral nature; or, in other
words, it is the fashionable “inverted or biological anthropomorphism”
of the day, of which we shall all probably be heartily ashamed by and
by; just now we are concerned with a more important matter, to wit,
the dog’s nose. Its character may be seen even in the most artificial
breeds, that is to say, in those which have most widely diverged from
the parent-form and are entirely dependent on us, such as pugs and
toy-terriers. The pampered lap-dog in the midst of his comforts has
one great thorn in his side, one perpetual misery to endure, in the
perfumes which please his mistress. He too is a little Venetian in his
way, but his way is not hers. The camphor-wood chest in her room is an
offence to him, the case of glass-stoppered scents an abomination. All
fragrant flowers are as asafoetida to his exquisite nostrils, and his
face is turned aside in very ill-concealed disgust from the sandal-wood
box or fan. It is warm and soft on her lap, but an incurable grief to
be so near her pocket-handkerchief, saturated with nasty white-rose or
lavender. If she must perfume herself with flowery essences he would
prefer an essential oil expressed from the gorgeous _Rafflesia Arnoldi_
of the Bornean forest, or even from the humble carrion-flower which
blossoms nearer home.
The moral of all this is, that while the dog has become far too useful
for us to think of parting with it--useful in a thousand ways, and
likely to be useful in a thousand more, as new breeds arise with
modified forms and with new unimagined propensities--it would be
a blessed thing, both for man and dog, to draw the line at useful
animals, to put and keep them in their place, which is not in the
house, and value them at their proper worth, as we do our horses, pigs,
cows, goats, sheep, and rabbits.
But there is a place in the human heart, the female heart especially,
which would be vacant without an animal to love and fondle, a desire
to have some furred creature for a friend--not a feathered creature,
albeit feathered pets are common enough, because, owing to the bird’s
organisation, to be handled is often painful and injurious to it, and
in any case it deranges the feathers; and this love is unsatisfied and
feels itself defrauded of its due unless it can be expressed in the
legitimate mammalian way, which is to have contact with its object,
to touch with the fingers and caress. Fortunately such a feeling or
instinct can be amply gratified without the dog; there are scores,
perhaps hundreds, of species incomparably before this animal in all
estimable qualities, which can be touched with hand and lips without
defilement. Only a few need be mentioned in this place.
One of the first animals worthy of so high a distinction, which would
occur to many travelled men, is the marmoset: a fairy monkey in its
smallness and extreme beauty, clothed in long soft hair with a lustre
as of spun silk; in manners pleasantly tricksy, but not scatter-brained
and wildly capricious like its larger irresponsible relations, which is
an advantage. No visitor to the Brazils can have failed to be charmed
with these small animals, which are frequently kept as pets by ladies,
and among pets they are surpassed by none in attachment to their
mistress.
A nobler animal, capable of endearing itself to man as well as woman,
is the lemur, of which there are several very beautiful species.
Strong, agile, swift and graceful in action as the monkey, to which
it is related, but with an even, placid disposition; monkey-like in
form, but without the monkey’s angularities and that appearance of
spareness which reminds one of a naked, half-starved Hindoo, he has a
better-proportioned figure for beauty, and his dark, richly coloured
coat of woolly fur gives a pleasing roundness to his form. Moreover,
he has not got the monkey’s pathetic old man’s withered countenance,
but a sharp, somewhat vulpine face, black as ebony, a suitable setting
for his chief glory--the luminous eyes, of every shining yellow colour
seen in gold, topaz, and cat’s-eye. “Night wood-ghost,” the natives
name it on account of its brilliant eyes which shine by night, and its
motions in the trees, swift and noiseless as the flight of an owl. He
is of ancient lineage, one of Nature’s aristocrats; a child of the
savage forest, as you can see in the flashing hostile orbs, and in
the combined ease and power of its motions; yet withal of a sweet and
placable temper.
Even among the small-brained rodents we should not look in vain for
favourites; and foremost in attractiveness are perhaps the squirrels,
inhabiting all climates. Blithe-hearted as birds and as volatile in
disposition, almost aerial in their habits, and in some tropical,
richly coloured forms resembling cuckoos and other long-tailed,
graceful avians, as they run leaping from branch to branch among the
trees; what animation and marvellous swiftness of motion they display,
what an endless variety of pretty whimsical attitudes and gestures!
“All the motions of a squirrel imply spectators as much as those
of a dancing-girl,” says Thoreau. They are easily tamed, coming at
call to be fed from the hand; how strange it seems that they are not
domestic, and found at every house in town and country where there are
trees! Their unfailing spirits and fantastic performances would have a
wholesome effect on our too sombre minds, and in cities like London
would bring us a thought of the alert life and eternal gladness of
Nature.
For those who would prefer a more terrestrial rodent, yet one more
daintily fashioned than the rough-cast rabbit and guinea-pig, there are
others. For a large animal the beautiful Patagonian dolichotis, like no
other mammalian in its form, double the size of the hare, and a docile
pet when tamed; and for a small one the charming lagidium or Andean
vizcacha, with rabbit-like ears, long tail, arched like a squirrel’s,
the fur blue-grey in colour above, and beneath golden yellow. And the
chinchilla, white and pale grey, with round leaf-like ears, and soft
dove’s eyes--a rare and delicate creature. There is in this small
mountain troglodyte something poetic, tender, flower-like--a mammalian
_edelweiss_. Poor little hunted chinchilla, did the Incas of old love
you more than we do now, who love you only dead? For you were also of
the great mountains, where Viracocha sat on his throne of snow, and the
coming sun-god first touched your stony dwelling-places with rose and
amber flame; and perhaps they regarded you as an animal sacred to the
Immortals. If so, then you have indeed lost your friends, for we have
no such fancies, and spare not.
It is a great descent, in more senses than one, to the prairie
marmot--from the mountain to the plain, and from the beautiful to
the grotesque; yet this dweller on the flat earth, gross in form and
drab in colour, is a great pleasure-giver. He tickles the sense of
the ludicrous, and it is good to laugh. His staring eyes, spasmodic
gestures, and barking exclamations are almost painful, they are so
genuine; for what an unearthly-looking monster one must seem to him!
He is a gnome who has somehow stumbled out of his subterranean abode,
and, like the young mole in Lessing’s fable, is overwhelmed with
astonishment at everything he sees in this upper world. Then there
is the agouti, with pointed head, beautifully arched back, and legs
slender, proportionally, as the gazelle’s; its resemblance in form to
the small musk deer has been remarked--a rodent moulded in the great
Artist-Mother’s happiest mood. The colour of its coat, relieved only
by its pink ears and a broad shining black stripe on the back, is
red Venetian gold, the hue which the old Italian masters gave to the
tresses of their angelic women. A mild-tempered animal, which may be
taken from its native woods and made tame in a few days. Many of the
smaller rodents might also be mentioned, such as the quaint, bird-like
jerboa, and the variegated loucheres; and so on down even to the minute
harvest-mouse. Forms and sizes to suit all tastes; for why should we
all have alike? Let fashion in pets go out with the canines.
To go back to the other extreme, from low to high, there are the wild
cats inhabiting all desert places on the globe. Tigers and leopards
made small; clouded, or with a clear golden ground-colour, pale or red
gold or grey, and black-striped, barred zebra-like, or spotted, or
with the colours disposed in strange patterns, beautifully harmonious.
As in the lemurs, and surpassing them, here are brilliant luminous
eyes and great strength of sinew; but these are not of peace: the
serpent-like silence of the movements and fateful stillness of the
lithe form, and the round watchful orbs that seem like the two fiery
gems set in a carved figure of rich stone--these betray the deadly
purpose. Yet their hearts may also be conquered with kindness. The
domestic cat is a proof of it; she is found in most houses, and whether
we make a pet of her or not, long familiarity has given her a place in
our affections. But when we go from home and visit regions infinitely
richer in life than our own, it surprises and offends us to meet with
the same cat still; for it looks as if man had failed, in the midst of
so much variety, to find anything better or equally good. Nature abhors
monotony; why should we force it on her to our own disadvantage?
Here then we have a few mammalian forms gathered at random from several
widely separated families, each as it were the final and highest
effort of Nature in one particular direction--“the bright consummate
flower” in a group, the other members of which seem by comparison
coarse and unfinished. We boast to be lovers of the beautiful, and
it is here in its highest form. Birds may be said to have a greater
beauty, but it is different in kind; and they are winged and far from
us. They are of the sky and their forms are aerial; and their aerial
nature is not in touch with ours. For the mammalians we, who are also
mammals and bound to earth, have a greater sympathy, and their beauty
has for us a more enduring charm. If it is out of our sight and far
removed from most of us, and growing farther year by year, we have
only ourselves to blame. For how rich are the mountains and forests
and desert places of the earth, where we sometimes go to slay Nature’s
untamed beautiful children, assisted in our task by that servant and
friend that is so worthy of us! And on the other hand, how poor are
our houses and villages and cities! The dog is there, inherited from
barbarous progenitors, who tamed him not to be a pet or friend, but to
assist them in their quest for flesh, and for other purposes; to be
a scavenger, as he still is in Eastern countries, or, as in the case
of the ancient Hyrcanians, to devour the corpses of their dead. He is
there, but his title is bad; why should we suffer him? We may wash
him daily with many waters, but the jackal taint remains. That which
Nature has made unclean let it be unclean still, for we cannot make
it different. Her lustral water which purifies for ever is a secret
to our chemistry. Or if not altogether a secret, if, as some imagine,
the ingredients may be dimly guessed, they are too slow for us in
their working. Man’s years are limited and his purposes change. Nature
has all time for her processes; “the eternal years of God are hers.”
Moreover, there is nothing we can desire and not find in her garden,
which has infinite variety. Why should we cherish a carrion-flower and
wear it in our bosoms while carelessly trampling on so many bright and
beautiful blooms? It is a pity to trample on them, since the effect
of so destructive a habit is to make them rare; and “rarity,” as
certain of our great naturalists have told us, “is the precursor to
extinction.” And perhaps by and by, blaming ourselves for the past, we
shall be diligently seeking everywhere for them, anxious to find and to
bring them into our houses, where, after long companionship with the
dog, they will serve to sweeten our imaginations and be a joy for ever.
NOTE.--I had pronounced the foregoing old magazine article unusable,
partly because of the manner of it, its carefulness, and partly
because it was somewhat polemical and touched on questions which are
not natural history, pure and simple. Now at the last moment I have
resolved to put it in--just for fun.
It appeared anonymously ages ago in _Macmillan’s Magazine_, then
edited by Mowbray Morris, who wrote to me that my article had given
him a painful shock, that it would hurt and disgust many readers of
the Magazine, and, finally, that all I and others like me could say
in derogation of the dog would have no effect on those who loved and
esteemed that friend of man at its proper worth.
“All right,” I replied. “Send me back the MS. Of course you mustn’t
let anything appear in your magazine to hurt the feelings of these
dear people.”
No, he wouldn’t, he said. He had accepted the article and would print
it. And in due time print it he did.
Just then a lady named Frances Power Cobbe, whom I greatly esteemed
and admired for her courage in combating one of the most horrible
forms of cruelty practised on animals, had a book in the press
entitled “The Friend of Man and his Friends, the Poets.” Reading my
unsigned paper in the Magazine, she picked up her pen in a noble rage
to add some words to her Introduction, in which she hurled at me
certain sayings of Schopenhauer describing man as a very contemptible
creature when compared with the dog, and also saying that the writer
of the article was “worse than a vivisectionist.”
This struck me as a bit thick, seeing that a vivisectionist had always
been to her the most damnable being in the universe. One or two of my
friends, who knew I had written the article, then remonstrated with
the lady for using such expressions of one who, though tactless and
somewhat brutal, was also a lover of all the creatures, and didn’t
like to hear so much praise of the dog at the expense of the other
animals. The result was that she smoothed her ruffled plumes and sent
her regrets and a promise to excise the obnoxious passage in her
preface in the next edition.
Of course it doesn’t matter two straws whether she ever had the
opportunity of doing so or not: the best part of the story is still to
come--the funny part, and a wise word which, though laughingly spoken,
may yet do good.
The lady’s book in the meantime had fallen by chance into the hands
of Andrew Lang, and as it was just the sort of thing to delight him,
he made it the subject of one of his most charmingly amusing leaders
in the _Daily News_ of that time. In this article, after the usual
pleasant word for the book and its author, he deals with the subject
of the dog and man’s feeling for it in ancient and modern times,
and of the great length to which it has been carried recently, and
concludes with a passage which I must quote in full, as I don’t think
this article ever reappeared among his _Lost Leaders_, and it is worth
preserving for the sake of its Andrew Langishness, as well as of its
moral. After quoting some of the most notable sayings in praise of the
dog, he concludes:
“There is perhaps some slight danger of reaction against all this, and
Miss Cobbe seems to have anticipated it in a sharp attack on a writer
hostile to dogs. This writer, as though in his turn anticipating the
coming worship of the dog, has expressed himself with considerable
force against the ‘great dog superstition,’ and has gone so far as to
characterise the dog’s affection, devotion, and courage in defence
of his master as a ‘very small and very low thing.’ It is easy to
imagine how Miss Cobbe characterises _him_. Warned by this example,
we shall take care not to say that, nowadays perhaps, the dog is too
much with us in literature. It may be thought--we do not say it is
our opinion--that the dog’s worst peril awaits him at the moment of
his highest fortune, when he has become the pet and protégé of women.
Women may spoil him, so the cynic might say--if a cynic could be
expected to say anything unkind on such a subject--as they spoil all
their favourites. Under their enervating patronage he may gradually
lose some of his most cherished qualities, until he whines with the
poet, ‘What is it, in this world of ours, that makes it fatal to be
loved?’ For fatal it would be if the dog were gradually evolved into
a thing of tricks, a suppliant for sugar at afternoon tea, a pert
assailant only of the people who never mean to rob the house, or a
being deaf to the cry of ‘rats,’ but fiercely active in the pursuit
of a worsted ball--a fine-coated dandy with his initials embroidered
on his back. His affection, his fidelity, his reasoning power are
very good things, but it is not all a blessing for him that they are
finding their way into literature. For literature never can take a
thing simply for what it is worth. The plain dealing dog must be
distinctly bored by the ever-growing obligation to live up to the
anecdotes of him in the philosophic journals. These anecdotes are
not told for his sake; they are told to save the self-respect of
people who want an idol, and who are distorting him into a figure
of pure convention for their domestic altars. He is now expected to
discriminate between relations and mere friends of the house; to wag
his tail at ‘God save the Queen’; to count up to five in chips of
firewood, and to seven in mutton bones; to howl for all deaths in
the family above the degree of second cousin; to post letters, and
refuse them when they have been insufficiently stamped; and last and
most intolerable, to show a tender solicitude when the tabby is out
of sorts. He will do these things when they are required of him, for
he is the most good-natured and obliging fellow in the world, but
it ought never to be forgotten that he hates to do them, and that
all he really cares for is his daily dinner, his run, his rat, and
his occasional caress. He is not in the least concerned about the
friendship of the poets, and the attempt to live up to their interest
in him is playing havoc with his sincerity, and making him only less
of a _nevrose_ than the quite unnecessary cat. His earlier difficulty
with the Egyptians is a warning that ought to serve for all time. If
he ate up Apis it was but as a rough and ready way of inviting the
worshippers of Apis to leave him alone.”
XXV
MY FRIEND THE PIG
Is there a man among us who on running through a list of his friends
is unable to say that there is one among them who is a perfect pig?
I think not; and if any reader says that he has no such an one for
the simple reason that he would not and could not make a friend of a
perfect pig, I shall maintain that he is mistaken, that if he goes over
the list a second time and a little more carefully, he will find in it
not only a pig, but a sheep, a cow, a fox, a cat, a stoat, and even a
perfect toad.
But all this is a question I am not concerned with, seeing that the pig
I wish to write about is a real one--a four-footed beast with parted
hoofs. I have a friendly feeling towards pigs generally, and consider
them the most intelligent of beasts, not excepting the elephant and
the anthropoid ape--the dog is not to be mentioned in this connection.
I also like his disposition and attitude towards all other creatures,
especially man. He is not suspicious, or shrinkingly submissive, like
horses, cattle, and sheep; nor an impudent devil-may-care like the
goat; nor hostile like the goose; nor condescending like the cat;
nor a flattering parasite like the dog. He views us from a totally
different, a sort of democratic, standpoint as fellow-citizens and
brothers, and takes it for granted, or grunted, that we understand
his language, and without servility or insolence he has a natural,
pleasant, camerados-all or hail-fellow-well-met air with us.
It may come as a shock to some of my readers when I add that I like
him, too, in the form of rashers on the breakfast-table; and this I
say with a purpose on account of much wild and idle talk one hears on
this question even from one’s dearest friends--the insincere horror
expressed and denunciation of the revolting custom of eating our
fellow-mortals. The other day a lady of my acquaintance told me that
she went to call on some people who lived a good distance from her
house, and was obliged to stay to luncheon. This consisted mainly of
roast pork, and as if that was not enough, her host, when helping her,
actually asked if she was fond of a dreadful thing called the crackling!