MORAL FACULTIES OF BRUTES. 
531 
so attractive as the wisely indulgent father — the devoted 
mother ? Is it instinct only in the brute, and associated with 
many a virtue in the human being ? It is instinct and virtue com¬ 
bined in both. Let us trace a little the workings of this instinct. 
It is told of a brute in human shape—a disgrace to science 
and to the name of a physiologist—that when he was dissecting 
a bitch alive, he could only hush her cries by suffering her to 
lick her offspring ; and then, in spite of his barbarity, she was 
quiet. Our friend, the Ettrick Shepherd, gives us an anecdote 
of the parental affection of the bitch. He says that “a butcher 
had such implicit dependence on the attention of his dog to 
his orders, that whenever he put a cot of sheep before her, 
he took a pride in leaving them entirely to her, and either 
remained to take a glass with the farmer of whom he made the 
purchase, or took another road, to look after bargains or other 
business. But one time he chanced to commit a drove to her 
charge without attending to her condition as he ought to have 
done. His farm was five miles away over the wild hills, and 
there was no regularly defined path to it. On coming home late 
in the evening, he was astonished to hear that his faithful animal 
had not made her appearance with the flock. He and his son 
immediately prepared to set out by different paths in search of 
her; but on their going out into the street, there she was, coming 
with the drove, and no one missing; but she was carrying a 
young pup in her mouth. She had been taken in travail on those 
hills ; and how the poor beast had contrived to manage the drove 
in her state of suffering, is beyond human calculation, for her 
road lay through sheep the whole way. Her master’s heart 
smote him when he saw what she had suffered and effected; 
yet she was nothing daunted, and having deposited her young 
one in a place of safety, she again set out full speed to the hills, 
and brought another and another, till she had removed the whole 
litter one by one; but the last one was dead. 
Another person had more upon his conscience; for he, too, had 
not sufficiently regarded the situation of his bitch, and he took her 
nearly twenty miles, and she whelped at the greatest distance 
from home; and she, also, brought home her offspring one by one; 
but they were all dead, and when she arrived with the last, she 
had just strength enough remaining to crawl to her bed, and she 
looked wistfully in her master’s face, and died. 
