THE COMMON-SENSE VIEW 165 



domesticated in Europe, Asia, and Africa. No 

 race of men is too primitive to be without the dog. 

 The bones of the dog are found in the middens 

 of the Baltic, and rude representations of it are 

 chiseled on the oldest monuments of Egypt and 

 Assyria. The dog was the servant of man away 

 in paleolithic times, when the mastodon was on 

 earth, and man was a naked troglodyte, and 

 Europe extended westward to the Azores. And 

 he has been a faithful friend, a tireless ally, and 

 an enthusiastic slave of a thankless and inhuman 

 master ever since. 



Birds are pre-eminently emotional and artistic. 

 This is shown by their fondness for singing, their 

 fine dress, their pining for their dead, their dainty 

 architecture, their pretty forms and manners of 

 life, their joyousness, and their love for their 

 young. Birds are the most beautiful and engaging 

 of all terrestrial beings. Endowed with the power 

 of flight, eminently active, light-hearted and free, 

 attired in all the colours of the rainbow, and with 

 voices of unrivalled richness and melody, birds are 

 the admiration and envy of all of those that dwell 

 on the earth. Birds possess naturally and in mar- 

 vellous perfection that power of locomotion which 

 has been so long sought for by slow-shuffling man. 

 Birds are also incomparable musicians, no other 

 animals, not even men, approaching them in the 

 surpassing brilliancy and sweetness of their song. 

 No human musician in high-sounding hall can 

 equal the artless lay of the wild bird ringing melo- 

 diously through the leafy colonnades of the woods. 



