ADDRESS OF MR. LORING. 



35 



it has been controlled by the social laws which make 

 the world what it is — how it enables the great com- 

 munity of man to dwell here on the face of the earth 

 — how it stands, the pedestal upon which a nobler 

 fabric rests — how its condition tells the tale of races 

 higher in the scale of being. That strange and mys- 

 terious relation between man and animals, everywhere 

 recognized, everywhere felt — that mutual dependence, 

 each upon the other — that intelligent appropriation 

 and cultivation on the one hand, that unconscious and 

 entire obedjence and submission of all the great vital 

 forces on the other — who can tell it all ? And superior 

 as we may be, powerful, controlling, and independent, 

 can any man contemplate the magnitude of the change, 

 were the '^popular sovereignty" of this great community 

 of cattle to be asserted, and man's dominion be suddenly 

 broken? From the feeding of armies, and the sustaining 

 of the busy throng who fill places of power and trust, 

 down to the nourishing drop which supports the feeble 

 child in its first grasp upon life, it is the domestic animal 

 which hears our long and constant human appeal, and 

 never hesitates in its devoted and self-sacrificing reply. 

 In parks, in meadows, before the cottage door, with an 

 entire and unresistins; submission to circumstances, 

 there come to man, from his dumb ally, food and rai- 

 ment, and an unceasing claim upon his skill and his 

 humanity. It is the animal kingdom which forms one 

 of the liveliest charms of a cultivated landscape, in 

 motion and in repose. And man never succeeds in 

 subduing the earth, and in revealing its quiet domestic 

 beauty, until he has enlisted those servants, without 

 whose aid agriculture must fail, and whose value is 



