ON THE INTELLECTUAL AND 
532 
We have heard of a cat whose young ones were destroyed, 
and who wandered pining about until she discovered the place 
in which they were buried; and she scratched them up, and 
brought them one by one and laid them at her master’s feet, as 
if to reproach him for his cruelty, and then was quieter; but it 
was long ere she regained her former familiarity. 
We might refer to our biped patient, the common hen, the 
most cowardly creature at other times, exhibiting the greatest 
degree of courage in defence of her young, and braving every 
danger with a perfect disregard of her own safety. What sports¬ 
man has not seen the common partridge actually strike at the 
pointer when it has rushed suddenly into the midst of a covey; 
and the running or fluttering, as with broken wing, close to the 
very nose of the dog, is an every-day occurrence, indicative of 
parental affection and of instinct. 
The sheep is not a very intellectual animal: what kind of a 
mother does she make ? Listen to the bleatings with which she 
is inquiring how it fares with the young one, grazing in a some¬ 
what distant part of the field; the eager tone with which she 
calls it to that which was its earliest food; the courage with 
which she defends it even from her own dog. The following 
anecdotes will shew us how a stupid sheep can feel. Here we 
quote again from the Ettrick shepherd:—“We had one very 
hard winter, so that our sheep grew lean in the spring, and the 
thwarter-ill came among them, and carried off a number. Often 
have I seen these poor victims when fallen down to rise no more, 
even when unable to lift their heads from the ground, holding 
up the leg to invite the starving lamb to the miserable pittance 
that the udder could still supply. I had never seen aught more 
painfully affecting. It is well known that it is a custom with 
shepherds when a lamb dies, if the mother have sufficiency of 
milk, to bring her in and put another lamb to her: this is done 
by putting the skin of the dead lamb upon the living one. The 
ewe immediately acknowledges the relationship; and after the 
skin has warmed on it, so as to give it something of the smell of 
her own progeny, and it has sucked her two or three times, she 
accepts and nourishes it as her own ever after. Whether it is 
from joy at this apparent reanimation of her young one, or a 
little doubt remaining on her mind that she would fain dispel, I 
cannot decide; but for a number of days she shews far more 
