352 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the animars control. There are such things in the dog, elephant, horse, 

 and other animals as excess of zeal, wrong ideas of duty, mistakes 

 in the mode of discharging it, and morhid conscientiousness. Man's 

 cruel taunts not unfrequently lead the too willing horse or elephant to 

 the attempting of tasks for which their strength, or lack thereof, does 

 not qualify them, and death in or from such attempts is the occasional 

 result ; while the dog sometimes carries its honesty or fidelity in the 

 defense of a trust to a ridiculous extent, or displays qualities, noble in 

 themselves, under absurd circumstances. The dog's anxiety to learn 

 his duty has been pointed out by the Ettrick Shepherd, who thus writes 

 of his celebrated Sirrah : '* As soon as he discovered that it was his 

 duty [to turn sheep], and that it obliged me, I can never forget with 

 what anxiety and eagerness he learned his different evolutions." 



Duties that are voluntarily assumed, that are frequently of an irk- 

 some and even of an unnatural kind, are sometimes discharged in the 

 most admirable way — for instance, by self -constituted foster-parents 

 that have adopted orphaned or deserted young, often belonging to 

 other genera and species, and even to natural enemies. 



Quite as frequently, perhaps, parental or maternal duties of a nat- 

 ural and important character are delegated or left to any other animal 

 possessed of a sufficiently powerful charity or compassion, a sufficiently 

 strong maternal or parental " instinct." The duties of pai-entage or 

 otherwise may be simply left undischarged without the slightest regard 

 to the results of such neglect ; every opportunity may be taken of 

 shirking work that is disagreeable, or a task of whatever nature is exe- 

 cuted in a very perfunctory, perhaps merely nominal way. There is, 

 in other words, in some cases just as decided an insensibility to the 

 claims of duty, just as marked a cold indifference to its discharge, as in 

 other cases there are conscientiousness and kindliness. It is only fair, 

 however, to bear in mind that such a2Xtthy, frequently of an obviously 

 unnatural character, is one of the common results of mental defect or 

 disorder, just as it is too frequently in man himself. 



The dog frequently makes duty and its discharge paramount to all 

 other considerations. To it are sacrificed even revenge on the one 

 hand, or temptations to the pursuit of game, or to access to food, on the 

 other. Death itself is sometimes preferred to the desertion of a trust 

 or charge (Watson). Many a dog restrains all its natural propensities 

 under a sense of duty and responsibility. When on " duty," intrusted 

 with a message from a master, it very literally places " business before 

 pleasure " ; its self-control may even prevent desirable or necessary 

 self-defense. 



Whether it be from a sense of justice, of duty, or of conscientious- 

 ness, it is a fact that certain working dogs and other animals not only 

 attend faithfully to their own duties, but see that their companions 

 give equal attention to theirs. They exact duty or work from, or en- 

 force it in, their colleagues (Watson). 



