(544 THE WORLD'S WONDERS. 



discomfort of all hands. To-day I gave up the last hope of saving 

 them. Their disease is as clearly mental as in the case of any 

 human being. The more material functions of the poor brutes 

 go on without interruption ; they eat voraciously, retain their 

 strength, and sleep well. But all the indications beyond this go 

 to prove that the original epilepsy, which was the first manifes- 

 tation of brain disease among them, has been followed by a true 

 lunacy. They bark frenziedly at nothing, and walk in straight 

 and curved lines with anxious and unwearying perseverance. 



"They fawn on you, but without seeming to appreciate the 

 notice you give them in return ; pushing their heads against your 

 person, or oscillating with a strange pantomime of fear. Their 

 most intelligent actions seem automatic: sometimes they claw 

 you, as if trying to burrow into your seal-skins ; sometimes they 

 remain for hours in moody silence, and then start off howling as 

 if pursued, and run up and down for hours. 



"So it was with poor Flora, our ' wise dog.' She was seized 

 with the endemic spasms, and, after a few wild, violent parox- 

 ysms, lapsed into a lethargic condition, eating voraciously, but 

 gaining no strength. This passing off, the same crazy wildness 

 took possession of her, and she died of brain disease in about six 

 weeks. Generally they perish with symptoms resembling 

 locked-jaw in less than thirty-six hours after the first attack." 



In another portion of his Journal, Dr. Kane announces the 

 death of his favorite dog by suicide ; this dog appeared to be 

 seized with a fit, but coining out of this he was still somewhat 

 delirious, and went into the water, where he drowned himself like 

 a human distracted by a burden of insupportable woe. 



There is so much of identical character between Arctic dogs 

 and wolves that they are very properly assigned to a family 

 origin. The oblique position of the wolf's eye is common among 

 Esquimau dogs. Kane had a slut, one of the tamest and most 

 affectionate of the whole of them, who had the long legs and 

 compact body, and drooping tail, and wild, scared expression of 

 the eye, which some naturalists have supposed to characterize 

 the wolf alone. When domesticated early and it is easy to 



