INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 89 



calls, a freemasonry between them. Yet activity of 

 perception, and lively instinct, is occasionally found 

 quite wanting. Thus, of two dogs who had fol- 

 lowed their masters, in a burning sun, along the 

 sands of the French coast, on the Mediterranean, 

 when they stopped to rest, one immediately dug 

 with his feet a hole, sufficient to shelter and cool 

 him, while the other stood whining in distress, 

 without even the intelligence to imitate his compa- 

 nion. Another instance of stupid indifference is 

 related to have been witnessed by Sir Robert Heron, 

 who was followed home from the assizes by a strange 

 dog. The animal stayed at his house, without the 

 least concern, until the Baronet returned to the 

 same county town, when he found the dog was the 

 property of a brother magistrate, and had followed 

 the first mentioned, to all appearance, only because 

 he, as well as the other, rode chestnut ponies. 



In the account of the dogs of Patagonia, we shall 

 see the extraordinary value savages set upon pos- 

 sessing them ; and we may thence infer their im- 

 portance, in the earlier eras of the world, to those 

 tribes that first succeeded in domesticating them. 

 They were the surgeons of the savage, licking the 

 wounds he had received in his frequent encounters 

 with fellow men, or wild beasts ; and guarding his 

 weapons and his couch. The interest thus excited, 

 soon caused the figure of a dog to become typical of 

 abstract ideas. His image became the universal 

 designation of fidelity ; his coercive instinct, that of 

 the two hemispheres, for so the Egyptians typified 



