

INTELLIGENCE. 



ders us conscious of surrounding objects and susceptible of pleasure and of 

 pain as the source of intellectual power and moral feeling. It is so with 

 ourselves. All our knowledge is derived from our perception of things 

 around us. A certain impression is made on the outward fibres of a sen- 

 sitive nerve. That impression, in some mysterious way, is conveyed to the 

 brain ; and there it is received registered stored and compared ; there 

 its connexions are traced and its consequences appreciated ; and thence 

 a variety of interesting impressions are conveyed and due use is made of 

 them. 



THE SENSE OF SMELL. 



Our subject the intellectual and moral feelings of brutes, and the me- 

 chanism on which they depend may be divided into two parts, the portion 

 that receives and conveys, and that which stores up and compares and uses 

 the impression. 



The portion that receives and conveys is far more developed in the 

 brute than in the human being. Whatever sense we take we clearly per- 

 ceive the triumph of animal power. 



The olfactory nerve in the horse, the dog, the ox, and the swine, is the 

 largest of all the cerebral nerves, and has much greater comparative 

 bulk in the quadruped than in the human being. The sense of smell 

 bearing proportion to the nerve on which it depends, is yet more acute. 

 In man it is connected with pleasure in the inferior animals with 

 life. The relative size of the nerve bears an invariable proportion to the 

 necessity of an acute sense of smell in the various animals large in the 

 horse compared with the olfactory nerve in the human being larger 

 in the ox, who is often sent into the fields to shift for himself larger 

 still in the swine, whose food is buried under the soil, or deeply immersed 

 in the filth or refuse, and still larger in the dog, the acutenese of whose 

 scent is so connected with our pleasure. 



INTELLIGENCE. 



We find little mention of insanity in the domesticated animals in any of 

 our modern authors, whether treating on agriculture, horsemanship, or 

 veterinary medicine, and yet there are some singular and very interesting 

 cases of aberration of intellect. The inferior animals are, to a certain 

 extent, endowed with the same faculties as ourselves. They are even sus- 

 ceptible of the same moral qualities. Hatred, love, fear, hope, joy, 

 distress, courage, timidity, jealousy, and many varied passions influence 

 and agitate them, as they do the human being. The dog is an illustra- 

 tion of this the most susceptible to every impression approaching the 

 nearest to man in his instincts, and in many actions that surprise the 

 philosopher, who justly appreciates it. 



What eagerness to bite is often displayed by the dog when labouring 

 under enteritis, and especially by him who has imbibed the poison of 

 rabies ! How singular is the less dangerous malady which induces the 

 horse and the dog to press unconsciously forward under the influence of 

 vertigo ! the eagerness with which, when labouring under phrenitis, he 

 strikes at every thing with his foot, or rushes upon it to seize it with 

 his teeth ! A kind of nostalgia is often recognised in that depression which 

 nothing can dissipate, and the invincible aversion to food, by means 



