NOTES ON THE DOG TRIBE. 



157 



supposing that this favourite dog receives a bad 

 wound, and that he comes up to you, with his 

 wound bleeding apace. You attend to it; you 

 rectify it ; you put a plaster on it, and then you 

 turn him loose. If the dog were endowed with 

 reason, he would value the plaster ; and knowing 

 that it was for his good, he would do all in his 

 power to keep it in its right place, just as you and I 

 would do. 



But, no. — Eeason is not within him. The wound 

 gives him pain ; — the plaster presses it too much ; 

 and immediately, the dog, with his teeth and feet, 

 tears all asunder: making bad worse. The more 

 the wound torments him, the more he will strive to 

 get quit of the plaster. He has no conception 

 whatever, that the plaster has been put upon his 

 wound by a kind master, in order to effect a cure. 

 He cannot contemplate a cure. He will bite the 

 injured part so soon as it begins to itch ; and if 

 the itching should continue, he will tear all up, 

 unless the master should prevent him. There is 

 no denying this. It is the case with all irrational 

 animals, from the mouse to the mastodon ; an(J 

 it proves incontestibly, that the dog, although more 

 susceptible of education, in certain matters, from 

 the hand of man, than all other animals put 

 together, the elephant not excepted, still, is far, 

 far removed from the rank of a rational being. 



