ANIMALS. 



165 



race of dogs and horses ! the principal differences 

 of which have been effected by the industry of 

 man, so adapting the food, the treatment, the la- 

 bour, and the climate, that nature seems almost 

 to have forgotten her original design, and the 

 tame animal no longer bears any resemblance to 

 its ancestors in the woods around him. 



In this manner, nature is under a kind of con- 

 straint, in those animals we have taught to live in 

 a state of servitude near us. The savage animals 

 preserve the marks of their first formation ; their 

 colours are generally the same ; a rough dusky 

 brown, or a tawny, seem almost their only varie- 

 ties. But it is otherwise in the tame ; their co- 

 lours are various, and their forms different from 

 each other. The nature of the climate, indeed, 

 operates upon all, but more particularly on these. 

 That nourishment which is prepared by the hand 

 of man, not adapted to their appetites, but to suit 

 his own convenience, that climate the rigours of 

 which he can soften, and that employment to which 

 they are sometimes assigned, produce a number 

 of distinctions that are not to be found among the 

 savage animals. These at first were accidental, 

 but in time became hereditary ; and a new race 

 of artificial monsters are propagated, rather to 

 answer the purposes of human pleasure, than their 

 own convenience. In short, their very appetites 

 may be changed ; and those that feed only upon 

 grass, may be rendered carnivorous. I have seen 

 a sheep that would eat flesh, and a horse that was 

 fond of oysters. 



