SENSITIVENESS. 305 



The dog especially, but also the monkey, elephant, horse, 

 cat, and other animals, show the same changeability or capri- 

 ciousness of mood, humour, temper, that children, and even 

 mature men so commonly do. And these changes occur as 

 suddenly and unexpectedly, follow each other with the same 

 rapidity, and are marked by the same singular contrasts^ 

 f from grave to gay,' or otherwise, as in man. 



Thus in the dog, under ill-usage, but even without any 

 apparent cause, love and confidence may turn all at once 

 to hate and fear (Cobbe). In the titi and other monkeys 

 pleasure, indifference, disgust, rapidly succeed each other, 

 as in the child (Cassell). Passionate fondness is succeeded, 

 gradually or suddenly, by the opposite feeling in certain 

 birds (White). Notorious fickleness of temper occurs in the 

 horse, as in Sir Walter Scott's ' Daisy.' 



These marked changes amount, therefore, frequently to, 

 or they include, complete revulsions of feeling. 



The condition of emotional excitability what is frequently, 

 though not quite correctly, spoken of both in man and other 

 animals as nervous sensibility though the first condition 

 usually or invariably includes the second is produced or 

 determined by 



1. Certain processes of breeding. Thus it is greatest in 

 high, least in low, breeds of the dog. V.C 



2. Certain forms of disease mental or bodily or con- 

 jointly physical and psychical. 



For instance, sick dogs are notoriously so hypersensitive 

 that their illness, of whatever nature, is apt to be seriously 

 aggravated by man's harsh or unkind tone, look, manner ; 

 and it is in such a condition of hyper sensitiveness from 

 disease that man's anger is so apt to produce the most pre- 

 judicial results, even to the extent of convulsions. 



3. Certain artificial and unhealthy forms or conditions 

 of life, including especially captivity, as illustrated in me- 

 nageries or zoological gardens, or in caged pets, and in 

 domestication. 



The morbid general nervous excitability of female ani- 

 mals in the pregnant or puerperal state is illustrated by the 

 common fact that the simplest or smallest disturbance of 

 VOL. n. x 



