Page:Under the Sun.djvu/277

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Bears, Wolves, Dogs, Rats.
253

find them again; who have been carried to immense distances by wrong trains, and turned up at home after all; who recognize acquaintances with every demonstration of delight after a long separation; who carry baskets from the bakers, and do not eat the contents by the way; who worry cats; who rescue men from drowning and from other forms of death; who howl when they hear street organs; who know a thief when he comes creeping up the back stairs at midnight, and hold him until help arrives; who fetch, and carry, and beg; who, in fact, do everything that a dog can do, and have died for all the world like Christians.

Such instances of intelligence in men, and even women, abound, and are amply authenticated by eyewitnesses.

Nor are any of the passions which move dogs unknown to human kind, for anecdotes illustrative of anger, fear, envy, courage, and so forth, are plentifully scattered up and down the pages of history and biography In short, looking at the matter from both sides, I really think myself that there is no reason for supposing that man is in any-way inferior to the dog.

In science the dogs go after the rats. So they do in nature. But in this book I was obliged to put the rats behind the dogs, as dogs grow so naturally out of wolves that I had it not in my heart to spoil the connection merely for the sake of being scientific. But the connection between rats and dogs, whichever way they come in a book, is none the less very intimate indeed, more so sometimes than the rats like.

But rats have a large history of their own, outside rat-pits. In Egypt and Chaldsea they were the symbol of utter destruction, while in India they are to-day the em-