284 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
It is warm and soft on her lap, but an incurable 
grief to be so near her _ pocket - handkerchief, 
saturated with nasty white-rose or lavender. If 
she must perfume herself with flowery essences he 
would prefer an essential oil expressed from the 
gorgeous Rafflesia Arnoldi of the Bornean forest, 
or even from the humble carrion-flower which 
blossoms nearer home. 
The moral of all this is, that while the dog has 
become far too useful for us to think of parting 
with it—useful in a thousand ways, and likely to 
be useful in a thousand more, as new breeds arise 
with modified forms and with new unimagined pro- 
pensities—it would be a blessed thing, both for 
man and dog, to draw the line at useful animals, 
to put and keep them in their place, which is not 
in the house, and value them at their proper worth, 
as we do our horses, pigs, cows, goats, sheep, and 
rabbits. 
But there is a place in the human heart, the 
female heart especially, which would be vacant 
without an animal to love and fondle, a desire to 
have some furred creature for a friend—not a 
feathered creature, albeit feathered pets are common 
enough, because, owing to the bird’s organisation, 
to be handled is often painful and injurious to it, 
and in any case it deranges the feathers; and this 
love is unsatisfied and feels itself defrauded of its 
due unless it can be expressed in the legitimate 
mammalian way, which is to have contact with 
its object, to touch with the fingers and caress. 
