ACUTENESS OF CANINE SCENT. 243 



an effect upon the elephant, that nothing could either 

 force or allure him to go along the road where the 

 cage in which it was enclosed had passed, till a gal- 

 lon of arrack was given him, when, his horror sud- 

 denly turning into fury, he broke down the paling to 

 get at his enemy, and killed him without difficulty. 



The excessive eagerness which dogs express in 

 smelling their game seems to Mr. Hervey to be 

 but little connected with the appetite for food, and 

 wholly independent of any preconceived ideas of the 

 objects of their pm'suit being fit for it : hence, several 

 kinds of them will not eat the game which they pur- 

 sue with such wild impetuosity, and of which the 

 scent appears to animate them to ecstasy, far, he 

 thinks, beyond what the mere desire of food could 

 excite. But I cannot help doubting whether domes- 

 tication has not perverted that sense, originally given 

 them as a means of directing them to their natural 

 prey, to a different purpose. As a confirmation of his 

 theory, he adds, that where blood has been shed, par- 

 ticularly that of their own species, oxen will assemble, 

 and, upon smelling it, roar and bellow, and show the 

 most manifest symptoms of horror and distress. Yet 

 these symptoms could not arise from any associated 

 ideas of danger or death, since they appear in them 

 that never had any opportunities of acquiring such 

 ideas. They must, therefore, be instinctive, like many 



