Page:OntheConductofMantoInferiorAnimals.pdf/78

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HUNTING.
69

dogs to pursue and kill various kinds of animals and birds; but it is evident that no natural propensity of this kind exists; this is evinced by the accidental friendships between animals intended by man to be at enmity. Dogs are capable of being trained to assist men in their savage sports, and their different qualities and shapes fit them for particular purposes of that kind. A dog after being taught to fetch and carry becomes as passionately fond of that exercise as any dog ever did of hunting, and yet nobody undertakes to say that providence made any dog on purpose to fetch and carry. A person, with whom the compiler was acquainted, had a young beagle, which he restrained from following the pack, in order to ascertain the truth of what he had frequently heard asserted, that that species had a natural propensity to pursue and kill hares. After the dog was completely grown up, he took a young hare and confined them together in a room. For some time they kept as far as possible assunder, but, afterwards, a familiarity and friendship gradually took place.

The practice of agriculture softens thehuman heart, and promotes the love of peace, ofjustice and of nature. The excesses of hunting, on the contrary, irritate the baneful passions of the soul; her vagabond votaries delight in blood, in rapine, and devastation. From the wandering tribes of Tartars, the demons of massacre and havoc, have selected their Tamerlanes and their Attilas, and have poured forth their swarms of barbarians to desolate the earth.—Oswald.

Men of refined understanding are never addicted to this vice, and women who delight in the butchery of the chase, should unsex themselves, and be regar ded as monsters.

This brutal pleasure claims, as a sacrifice to the