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. 



