IN OTHER ANIMALS. 183 



incompetency, where they exist, scarcely come within, or are 

 altogether beyond, the animal's control. There are such 

 things in the dog, elephant, horse, and other animals as ex- 

 cess of zeal, wrong ideas of duty, mistakes in the mode of 

 discharging it, and morbid conscientiousness, the discussion of 

 which, however, belongs rather to such chapters as those on 

 'Error* and on * Mental Derangement' or its causation. Man's 

 cruel taunts not unfrequently lead the too willing horse or ele- 

 phant to the attempting of tasks for which their strength, or 

 lack thereof, does not qualify them, and death in or from such 

 attempts is the occasional result ; while the dog sometimes 

 carries its honesty or fidelity in the defence of a trust to a 

 ridiculous extent, or displays qualities, noble in themselves, 

 under absurd circumstances. The dog's anxiety to learn his 

 duty has been pointed out by the Ettrick Shepherd, who thus 

 writes of his celebrated Sirrah : ' As soon as he discovered 

 that it was his duty [to turn sheep], and that it obliged me, 

 I can never forget with what anxiety and eagerness he learned 

 his different evolutions.' 



Duties that are voluntarily assumed, that are frequently of 

 an irksome and even unnatural kind, are sometimes discharged 

 in the most admirable way for instance, by self-constituted 

 foster-parents that have adopted orphaned or deserted young, 

 often belonging to other genera and species, and even to 

 natural enemies. 



Quite as frequently, perhaps, parental or maternal duties, 

 of a natural and important character, are delegated or left to 

 any other animal possessed of a sufficiently powerful charity 

 or compassion, a sufficiently strong maternal or parental 

 ' instinct.' The duties of parentage or otherwise may be simply 

 left undischarged, without the slightest regard to the results 

 of such neglect ; every opportunity may be taken of shirking 

 work that is disagreeable, or a task, of whatever nature, is 

 executed in a very perfunctory, perhaps merely nominal, 

 way. There is, in other words, in some cases just as decided 

 an insensibility to the claims of duty, just as marked a cold 

 indifference to its discharge, as in other cases there is con- 

 scientiousness and kindliness. It is only fair, however, to 

 bear in mind that such apathy, frequently of an obviously 



