530 
ON THE INTELLECTUAL AND 
and so I bought him. He was scarcely a year old; and knew 
so little of herding, that he had never turned a sheep in his life; 
-but as soon as he discovered that it was his duty to do so, and 
- that it obliged me, I can never forget with what anxiety and 
eagerness he learned his different evolutions; and when I once 
made him understand a direction, he never forgot or mistook it.” 
On one night seven hundred sheep that were under his care, 
frightened by something, scampered away in three different di¬ 
rections across the hills, in spite of all that he could do to keep 
them together. “ Sirrah,” said the shepherd, “ they’re a’ awa\” 
It was too dark for the dog and his master to see each other; but- 
Sirrah understood him, and setoff after the fugitives. The night 
passed on, and Hogg and his assistant traversed every neighbour¬ 
ing hill in anxious but fruitless search for the lambs; but he could 
hear nothing of them nor of the dog, and he was returning to his 
master with the doleful intelligence that he had lost all his lambs. 
“ On our way home, however,” says he, “ we discovered a lot of 
lambs at the bottom of a deep ravine, and Sirrah standing in front 
of them, looking round for some relief, but still true to his charge. 
The sun was then up ; and when we first came in view w r e con¬ 
cluded that it was one of the divisions, which Sirrah had been 
unable to manage until he came to that commanding situation; 
but what was our astonishment when we discovered that not 
one lamb of the whole flock was wanting. How he got all the 
divisions collected in the dark is beyond my comprehension. 
The charge was left entirely to himself from midnight until 
the rising sun; but if all the shepherds in the forest had 
been there to have assisted him, they could not have effected it 
with greater propriety. All that I can say is, that I never felt 
so grateful to any creature under the sun as I did to my honest 
Sirrah that morning.” 
We pass onto another division of our subject, the moral quali¬ 
ties,—what? of brutes? ay, and strongly developed and beauti¬ 
fully displayed, and often putting the biped to shame. We begin 
with the social affections. But they are mere instincts ! We care 
not for that. These instincts are the foundations of every virtue in 
the human being; and in the quadruped they are associated with 
many a good quality that cannot escape our regard and admi¬ 
ration. 
The parental affection ! Let it be instinct: what character is 
