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CHAPTEE II. 



GENERAL TREATMENT (continued). 



THE lower animals, and especially those which man domes- 

 ticates, have specific and strong claims on man's attention 

 and consideration, on his sympathy, on his sense of justice ; 

 all on such grounds as the following : 



1. They are unquestionably our fellow-creatures and 

 fellow -mortals. Colonel Hamley calls them, generally, our 

 6 poor relations,' while Landseer applied the same term more 

 specifically to monkeys. In the same sense which is not 

 altogether a figurative one they are entitled to the appel- 

 lation of ( brethren.' 



2. It may be that they are also, as many good and great 

 men including eminent clergymen, from Bishop Butler to 

 the Kev. J. G. Wood have thought, our fellow -immortals, 



3. They are our servants and slaves, ministering in in- 

 finite ways to our requirements. 



4. They are our own or our children's pets, companions, 

 or playthings ; and as such are frequently simply invaluable, 

 rescuing many a life, especially among educated and refined, 

 but vestal, women, from ennui and the morbid mental con- 

 ditions which spring from it. 



5. They are often the protectors and saviours of our lives 

 and property, displaying, in the succour of distress and the 

 defence of a master's goods, qualities that are by no means 

 too common in man himself. 



6. They are frequently also friends in the truest sense ; 

 friends compared with whom Byron, and many another who 

 has experienced the hollo wness and hypocrisy of human 

 friendship, has held man himself to be the ' lower ' animal. 



7. They are prototypes, or emblems, of man's own virtues 



