472 THE FOOD OF ANIMALS. 



ass Quidados agenos matan al asno." But putting aside harsh 

 usage and too much work, how comes it that an ass, contented with 

 his thistle in the hedge bottom of the highway, will live for twenty 

 or thirty years without an apparent ailment, whilst a man labours 

 under one kind of disease or other, more or less severe, during a 

 considerable portion of his life ? How is it that through the effect 

 of man's improvements in agriculture the stag in his luxuriant park 

 contracts a disease in the liver, whilst that on the bleak mountain's 

 top is ever healthy, and knows nothing of it ? Our race-horses are 

 always wanting the veterinary surgeon, and our dairy cattle the cow- 

 doctor. Our sheep get the rot, our lapdogs the mange, and our 

 poultry tumble down in apoplexy. Were these animals allowed to 

 range at large through nature's wild domain, free from the control 

 of man, we should always see them brisk and vigorous, and as full 

 of health, and as beautiful in their natural clothing for the season, 

 as are their congeners roving independent of all his boasted im- 

 provements. 



What a melancholy thing it is to reflect that rational man is per- 

 petually indisposed, and subject to a multiplicity of disorders, which 

 are seldom or never to be observed in the wild and irrational animals ! 

 Flesh and blood, and all their component parts, are the same both 

 in man and beast. Why then should man be doomed to such heavy 

 demands from the doctor and apothecary, whilst the beast, in a state 

 of nature, can do so well without their aid? Had Providence 

 doomed the flesh and blood of the inferior animals to the many 

 maladies which haunt our own, there would certainly have been 

 prepared some efficient remedies for their restoration to health in 

 the day of need. But this has not been the case ; wherefore, we 

 may conclude, that no such provision was necessary ; and upon the 

 strength of this, we may surmise, with just reason, that we have 

 brought our sicknesses upon ourselves by our own follies; for, as we 

 are at the head of the creation, we cannot suppose for a moment 

 that Heaven would introduce disease into its primest work, and allow 

 its secondary product to be without it. When we see that the brute 

 creation thrives so admirably upon uniformity of food, and that man 

 is observed to languish under a multiplicity of it, we are enabled, 

 without much difficulty, to get at the source which gives rise to his 



