4 02 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The cautious and conservative old French savant Quatrefages says the 



more he reflects, the more he is convinced that man and animals think and 

 reason in virtue of a faculty that is common to both, and which is only far more 

 developed in the former than in the latter. He is very certain that when a cat 

 is trying to catch sparrows on level ground, and creeps along the hollows, avail- 

 ing herself of every tuft of grass, however small, she knows what she is about 

 just as well as the hunter who glides in a crouching attitude from one bush to 

 another. He illustrates dog capacity as follows : "I once had a mastiff of pure 

 breed, and which had attained its full size, remaining, however, very young in 

 character. "We were very good friends, and often played together. As soon as 

 ever I assumed an attitude of defense before him, he would leap upon me with 

 every appearance of fury, seizing in his mouth the arm which I had used as a 

 shield. He might have marked my arm deeply at the first onset, but he never 

 pressed it in a manner that could inflict the slightest pain. I often seized him 

 by his lower jaw with my hand, but he never used his teeth so as to bite me; 

 and yet, the next moment, the same teeth would indent a piece of wood I tried 

 to tear away from them. This animal evidently knew what it was doing when 

 it feigned the passion precisely opposite to that which it really felt ; Avhen, even 

 in the excitement of play, it retained sufficient mastery over its movements to 

 avoid hurting me. In reality it played a part in a comedy, and we can not act 

 without being conscious of it." 



Sydney Smith exhorts against over-caution. He says : " A great deal of 



talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their 

 graves men who have remained obscure because of timidity. The fact is that, 

 in order to do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering 

 on the brink and thinking of the cold and danger; but jump in and scramble 

 through as well as we can. It will not do to be perpetually calculating risks, 

 and adjusting nice chances. It did all very well before the flood, when a man 

 could consult his friends upon an intended publication for a hundred and fifty 

 years, and then live to see its success for six or seven centuries afterward. But 

 at present, a man waits, and doubts, and hesitates, and consults his father, 

 brother, cousin, friends, till one fine day he finds that he is sixty-five years of 

 age. There is so little time for our squeamishness that it is no bad rule to 

 preach up the necessity of a little violence done to the feelings and of efforts 

 made in defiance of strict and sober calculation." 



The stories of Jonah and Methuselah are but we should not complain ; 



the faith of an orthodox Brahman is subjected to still severer tests. The sacred 

 authority of the Sanaa- Veda vouches for the fact that Prince Yudirishi lived 2,300 

 and his rival Alerka 4,650 years. That is, however, a mere trifle, for a successor 

 of the last-named potentate lived just 66,000 years ; and the reader has hardly 

 recovered his breath, when the next chapter informs him that King Yakoyesha 

 lived 2,260,000 years and five months. (" Asiatic Eesearches," vol. ix, p. 305 ; 

 compare Buckle's " History of Civilization," vol. i, p. 52.) 



Truly Heroic Cures have somehow gone out of fashion. Dr. Hunt, 



writing in " Lippincott's Magazine," says that Paracelsus cured a leper by keep- 

 ing him sixty hours in a bath of hot mud (Schrodt's "Analekten," vol. i, p. 

 106) ; and when medicine failed to relieve the chronic headaches of Count Philip, 

 of Nassau, his surgeon trepanned his cranium twenty-seven times, and made him 

 sign a certificate to that effect. 



