STUDY I. 



27 



Other Philofophers, on the contrary, have afcrib- 

 cd the manners of animals, as thofe of men, to 

 education ; and their natural afFeftions, as well as 

 their animofities, to refemblance or diffimilitude 

 of form. But if friendlliip is founded in fimili- 

 tude of form, how comes it, that the hen, who 

 walks in fecurity, at the head of her brood, among 

 the horfes and oxen of a farm-yard, though part 

 of her family is fometimes accidentally crufhed by 

 the feet of thofe animals, collefts her young with 

 anxious inquietude at fight of the hawk, a fea- 

 thered animal like herfelf, who appears in the air 

 but as a black point, and whom, perhaps, fhe 

 hardly, if ever, faw before ? Why does the dog, 

 in the yard, fall a barking, in the night time, at 

 the fmell only of the fox, an animal which has a 

 flrong refemblance to himfelf ? If habits of long 

 ftanding could influence animals, as they do men, 

 how has it been poffible to render the oftrich of 

 the defert familiar to fuch a degree, that he has 

 been made to carry children on his plumelefs crup- 

 per ; whereas no fkill has, hitherto, been able to 

 tame the fwallow, a bird which has, from time 

 immemorial, built his neft in our houfes ? 



Where can we find, among the Hiflorians of 

 Nature, a Tacihis, who fliall unveil to us thefe 

 myfteries of the Cabinet of Heaven, without an 

 explanation of which, it is impoflible to write the 



Hiilory 



