CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. 



I. DOGS. 



There is a little skull amongst the bones I have col- 

 lected for the study of anatomy, which any slightly sci- 

 entific person would at once recognise as that of a dog. 

 It is a beautiful little skull, finely developed, and one sees 

 at a glance that the animal, when it was alive, must have 

 possessed more than ordinary intelligence. The scientific 

 lecturer would consider it rather valuable as an illustration 

 of cranial structure in the higher animals ; he might com- 

 pare it with the skull of a crocodile, and deduce conclusions 

 as to the manifest superiority of the canine brain. 



To me this beautiful little example of Divine con- 

 struction may be a teacher of scientific truths, but it is 

 also a great deal more than that. My memory clothes 

 it with mobile muscles and skin, covered with fine, short 

 hair, in patches of white and yellow. Where another sees 

 only hollow sockets in which lurk perpetual shadows, I 

 can see bright eyes wherein the sunshine played long 

 ago, just as it plays in the topaz depths of some clear 

 northern rivulet. I see the ears too, though the skull 

 has none ; and the ears listen and the eyes gaze with an 

 infinite love and longing. 



She was the friend of my boyhood, reader, the com- 

 panion of a thousand rambles, and when she died my 

 boyhood was dead also and became part of the irrecover- 

 ble past. There is an indentation in the bone, due to an 



