416 USE OF NATUEAL INSTKUMENTS. 



hands up and down on the edge of a door, or on a door-post, 

 or along the edges of a table whilst waiting or speaking, is 

 very monkeylike. And no black man, woman, or child ever 

 goes along a corridor or narrow passage without rubbing 

 both hands on the walls.' 



Certain other animals use their fore paws or fore legs 

 for many of the same purposes and in many of the same 

 ways for and in which the Quadrumana and man apply their 

 hands and arms. Thus a certain Eskimo dog speedily imitated 

 civilised man's custom of shaking hands by offering its paw 

 (McGahan); and this shaking hands with man by holding 

 up its paw is one of the commonest tricks of his dog pets. 

 ' Nature ' mentions a mastiff that, as a caress or mark of 

 affection, put his paws round a favourite companion cat, and 

 on her death in the same way round her only surviving 

 kitten, both cat and kitten previously sleeping habitually in 

 his kennel, with his fore legs thus guarding them. 



A large dog that had saved a small one from drowning 

 ' cuffed it first with one paw and then with the . other ' 

 (Wood). A female St. Bernard dog offered its paw to man 

 in token of its sympathy with human distress a sort of 

 hand offering or shaking not at all uncommon both in cat 

 and dog. The same affectionate St. Bernard embraced 

 * clasped ' a mistress in its forelegs the equivalents in it 

 of arms and died with its paws resting on or in the hand of 

 a much-loved master (Wood). Monteiro ' saw a dog eating 

 the grains off a green Indian-corn cob, which he was holding 

 down with his two front paws.' 



The cat not unfrequently uses its paw to touch or tap its 

 master's shoulder when it desires to attract his notice 

 (' Animal World '). A pet cat sitting at a carriage window, 

 whenever anything passing takes her fancy, ' puts her paw 

 on my chest,' says her mistress, * and makes a pretty little 

 noise, as though asking me if I had seen it also.' Another 

 laid her paw on the lips of a lady who had a distressing 

 cough every time she coughed, in evidence possibly of pity, 

 possibly in order to the physical suppression of the cough by 

 closure of the aperture by which alone it could find vent 

 (Wood). A third cat touched with her paw the lips of those 



