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pounce upon it, to show the little ones how to seize their 

 prey. Besides, it is well known that most extraordinary 

 revolutions can be effected in the species of the inferior 

 animals, as well as in man, in the course of a few generations. 

 How different is the trained and domesticated Arabian horse, 

 ' that paweth the earth with his hoof, and smelleth the battle 

 afar/ from his unsubdued brother of the desert — wild as 

 Bucephalus, and vicious as a zebra. The common cat is 

 only a ' diamond edition' of the tiger, which (like the crab 

 transformed into the apple, or the common hedge-weed brasica 

 into the turnip or the cabbage,) has improved by cultivation, 

 and has become the destroyer of vermin, instead of being 

 vermin herself. Even the sagacious and rational elephant 

 may be made to entrap its own species ; knowing, as it does, 

 and as every man in civilized society knows, that regular care, 

 security, and a constant supply of food, are more than equiva- 

 lents for the gipsy privilege of living a persecuted vagrant, 

 even though the condition is dignified with the name of 

 'liberty/ 



" Farther, the mode of acting is not uniform, even when 

 instinct is supposed to be the only guide. The hut of the 

 solitary beaver is as different from the usual residences of lus 

 species, as the coracle boat of an ancient Briton from a 

 modern man-of-war, or as Robinson Crusoe's hut from Buck- 

 ingham palace. Even the nests of birds are not exactly 

 uniform : the common hen, for example, though not very 

 tasteful at any time in the selection of a place for her eggs, is 

 sometimes more and sometimes less so. The birds which 

 have built on trees to which monkeys afterwards resort, are 

 obliged to shift their nests to the extemities of twigs ; and 

 thus they elude the vigilance of their tormentors. The 

 monkeys again, of the banian tree, watch for the snake till 

 they find it asleep, then beat its head against a stone till they 

 have destroyed ils poisonous fangs, and finally they throw it 

 to their children to play with. Their habits also, their capa- 



