Sir Andrew Smith, a zoologist
whose scrupulous accuracy was known to many persons, told me the
following story of which he was himself an eye-witness: At the Cape of
Good Hope an officer had often plagued a certain baboon, and the animal,
seeing him approaching one Sunday for parade, poured water into a hole
and hastily made some thick mud, which he skilfully dashed over the
officer as he passed by, to the amusement of many bystanders. For long
afterwards the baboon rejoiced and triumphed whenever he saw his victim.
The love of a dog for his master is notorious; as an old writer quaintly
says: "A dog is the only thing on this earth that luvs you more than he
luvs himself." In the agony of death a dog has been known to caress his
master, and every one has heard of the dog suffering under vivisection,
who licked the hand of the operator; this man, unless the operation was
fully justified by an increase of our knowledge, or unless he had a
heart of stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life.
As Whewell has well asked: "Who that reads the touching instances of
maternal affection, related so often of the women of all nations and of
the females of all animals, can doubt that the principle of action is
the same in the two cases?" We see maternal affection exhibited in the
most trifling details; thus, Rengger observed an American monkey (a
Cebus) carefully driving away the flies which plagued her infant; and
Duvaucel saw a Hylobates washing the face of her young ones in a stream.
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