LETTER XI. 



perty with attention and fidelity, and defends his 

 person with courage and zeal. He is eager to obtain 

 his caresses, and docile in obeying his commands. If 

 he has the misfortune to incur his displeasure, he 

 seeks every means to be restored to favour : he tes- 

 tifies emotion and anxiety at his absence, and is 

 transported with joy at his return. Among mankind 

 friendship cannot be more energetically expressed, 

 but is often accompanied with less sincerity. ---In a 

 number of other quadrupeds, the operations of in- 

 stinct are equally remarkable and striking. The 

 mischievous cunning of the monkey, the provident 

 foresight of the beaver, the sagacity of the elephant, 

 excite our astonishment. What can equal the subtle 

 artifices of predaceous. animals, in seeking and catch- 

 ing their prey, or those of the weaker and more timid, 

 in eluding the pursuits of the strong and ferocious ? 

 In this, as in all other things, you. \vill, my dear Sir, 

 discover the wisdom of the Creator. l)id not the 

 weaker animals use as many means of self-preserva- 

 tion, as the stronger employ for their destruction, th 

 former would soon be exterminated, and the latter 

 would afterwards perish for want of subsistence. 

 Animals, in their original state of Avildness and inde- 

 pendence, are subject to few alterations ; but those 

 which are subdued, and domesticated by man, un- 

 dergo through his management considerable changes^ 

 both in their figure and dispositions. . In the horse, 

 the cow, and several other domestic animals, we per- 

 ceive a number of varieties, some of which> indeed, 

 are the effects of nature, but more of them produced 

 by art and cultivation. The circumstances of soil 

 and climate have also a decided and well-known in- 

 fluence on the animal race, in varying their size, 

 their colour, or their covering, In the hyperborean 

 regions Nature has furnished the quadruped creatioa 

 with long and thickly planted hair, but with a lighter 

 and cooler vesture between the tropics ; and those 

 which are capable of being transported from the ex- 

 treme of cold to that of heat, or the contrary, are 

 (bund upon experiment to assume a dress adapted to 



