Part 15

Stevenson's essay {223} on _The Character of Dogs_ is not entirely satisfactory. It is surely a one-sided view of the dog that "he is vainer than man, singularly greedy of notice, singularly intolerant of ridicule, suspicious like the deaf, jealous to the degree of frenzy, and radically devoid of truth." It is hardly possible that he should be vainer than man; and in the dog, vanity is a far simpler and more lovable thing than the complex and offensive passion in his master. His greed for notice and his jealousy are part of his great love for his master. I do not remember that Stevenson ever speaks of the passionate love (not for mankind, but for one special person) which burns in the heart of a dog. It is a singular omission--and I cannot but think it intentional. If so he was wise, for it certainly does not lend itself to the manner which Stevenson adopts towards dogs. No doubt I may be led into sentimentality and general wearifulness in attempting to describe what seems to me the most striking characteristic of dogs--their great and enduring power of loving. It may be that "the day of an intelligent small dog is passed in the manufacture and laborious communication of falsehood." But he does not lie when he says quite plainly how greatly he loves his master. Nor do I agree that a small spoiled dog would prate interminably, and still about himself. I think he would say, "I love you" rather often, but that bears repetition. I know a Schipperke whose main interest in life is his dinner, but when his mistress was ill he had only two desires, to lie on her bed and to bite the doctor for approaching her. He had to be dragged out for a walk instead of eagerly begging for one. Was this an elaborate falsehood? Was it pretence? Was it conventionality?

A dog can hardly be expected to plead guilty when detected in crime. He jumps off the forbidden bed when he hears someone coming, and, being unaware that the warm place on the counterpane will betray him, he assumes a calm and happy air. But this is a lie so natural that I for one cannot blame the liar.

In my life with dogs I have felt much more clearly their desire to speak, and to speak truth, than the wish to deceive. I had an old Scotch terrier, who in his youth, before I knew him, had been called Nigel, no doubt because he was black and small, but as he grew up he somehow acquired the uncouth name of Scrubbins. At one stage of his career he was condemned to death for eczema. I begged him off, and he lived some five years with me, and was cured of his eczema by the devoted care of a servant. He was a dog of large heart, who, while he cared for others, was especially devoted to me. In his old age his eyes became dim and his limbs stiff. He had a pathetic way of standing staring into my eyes, or with difficulty getting his paws on to my knees to ask to have his head rubbed, an attention of which he never wearied. No one could doubt that this was his expression of the mutual love that bound us to each other. This was the indestructible impression produced, and it is useless to tell me that he may have been striving to conceal some crime, or at least some base and worldly point of view. When sentiment is applied to facts, rational conclusions are apt to be rare--but without a share of sentiment there might have been no facts to record.

There are innumerable cases proving the devotion of dogs--a passion surviving the master's death, and prolonged until the dog himself dies. Such is the story of the heroic dog seen to watch his master's dead body in South America, keeping the vultures off it, and only allowing himself an occasional rush to the river for water, until he too died. What is there here but a passion of love? We may call it instinct, but what is the love of a human mother?

A dog differs from his master in not taking offence; you may tread on his tail and he will only apologise for being in your way. But I have known a dog bite his mistress when she interfered with him in a fight, while he was beside himself with anger. In the same way an unhappy dog caught in a trap may be so maddened with pain as to attempt to bite those who seek to free him, but these are extreme cases. It is again part of this same lovable quality of dogs that they are not given to moods. They are always ready to welcome us and to wag tails when we notice them.

M. Anatole France shows in some ways a sympathy with dogs, and a sensitiveness to their mental attitudes, finer and more true than anything in Stevenson's essay. The misery of Riquet {226} over the _demenagement_ of his master, M. Bergeret, is admirably drawn. Riquet begins by barking fiercely when "des hommes inconnus, mal vetus, injurieux et farouches" invade his beloved house, and ends in being lifted in silent misery and shut up in a portmanteau. Riquet soon becomes too human, but he does at least show his adoration of M. Bergeret, in mourning over the desecration and removal of "ton fauteuil profond--le fauteuil ou nous reposions tous les soirs, et bien souvent le matin, a cote l'un de l'autre."

No. XII. of the _Pensees de Riquet_ does not bear on the love that subsists between dog and man; it goes deeper however, for it shows that men as well as dogs are dominated by instinctive night fears which unite them by a most ancient and enduring bond. Riquet says: "A la tombee de la nuit des puissances malfaisantes rodent autour de la maison," a fact obvious to all children. There is (No. XII.)an admirable comic prayer to his master beginning, "O mon maitre Bergeret, dieu de carnage, je t'adore." But it seems to me to miss the true flavour of doggishness.

Professor A. C. Bradley {227} strives to show that Shakespeare "did not care for dogs." His opinion is worthy of respect, and all the more that he seems to be a dog lover himself. At least, so I interpret what he says of Shakespeare: "To all that he loved most in men he was blind in dogs, and then we call him universal!" "What is significant," he says, "is the absence of sympathic allusion to the characteristic virtues of dogs, and the abundance of allusions of an insulting kind."

I had always imagined that the description of the hounds in "A Midsummer's Night's Dream" was written by one who liked dogs as individuals, not merely as a picturesque piece of hunting apparatus. But Professor Bradley's contrary opinion is probably the sounder. In the same way I think that the passage in "Lear," "Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart," etc., could only have been written by one who understood the shock which the little dogs' behaviour gave the King. On the other hand, I agree that Shakespeare does not sympathise with the admirable conduct of Launce, who sat in the stocks to save his dog from execution for theft.

Scott was a genuine dog lover. It is on record that he excused himself for not keeping an engagement on the score of the death of an old friend, that friend being his bulldog Camp. His deerhounds Bran and Maida are, like the Duke of Wellington's horse Copenhagen, known to all the world. I am glad to think that Scott's dogs are preserved in several of his portraits. In his books there are two types of dogs, Dandie Dinmonts' Pepper and Mustard who have given their master's name to a breed and are real dogs of flesh and blood. Or again, Harry Bertram's Wasp, who helps to save Dandie from the thieves. But there is also the theatrical dog, Roswal, in _The Talisman_, who springs at the throat of Conrad of Montserrat and saves his master's honour. Between these come Gurth's dog, Fangs, slightly tinged by the "tushery" of Ivanhoe, but still striking and pathetic. I keep still my sympathy with Gurth, who swears "by S. Edmund, S. Dunstan, S. Withold and S. Edward," that he will never forgive Cedric for having attempted to kill his dog, "the only living creature that ever showed me kindness."

But apart from his love of dogs Scott shows that he can use them with splendid dramatic effect; for instance, when Dugald Dalgetty and the Child of the Mist are escaping from the Duke of Argyll's prison, how we thrill as the distant baying of those deadly trackers, the bloodhounds, strikes on the ear of the fugitives.

I am not clear as to what was Dickens' personal attitude towards dogs, but he certainly understood the passion of the dog lover.

The man who ousted David Copperfield from the box-seat in the London Coach {229a} remarked, "'Orses and dorgs is some men's fancy. They're wittles and drink to me--lodging, wife and children, reading, writing, and 'rithmetic--snuff, tobacker, and sleep." Probably we should have felt, as Mr. Pickwick did on a similar occasion, {229b} that it would have been well if horses and dogs had been 'washing' also. I doubt, in fact, whether we should have enjoyed his company, or even whether we should have felt him a dog lover of our own sort--but we should not be too nice, and must allow some merit to his form of the passion.

Another of Dickens's characters, Mr. Sleary, {229c} of "the Horse Riding," has a much more attractive way of caring for animals. His theory of how a dog he has lost found him again always pleases me. The dog is believed to set on foot inquiries among his friends. "You don't happen to know a person of the name of Sleary, do you? Person of the name of Sleary in the Horse-Riding way--stout man--game eye?" The inquiries were successful; and I like, too, the frankly sentimental account of the appearance of the clown's dog after his master's death, and the dog's search for the clown's little girl:--

"We was getting up our Children in the Wood one morning, when there comes into our Ring by the stage door a dog. He had travelled a long way, he was in very bad condition, he was lame, and pretty well blind. He went round to our children, one after another, as if he was a-seeking for a child he knowd; and then he come to me, and throwed himself up behind, and stood on his two forelegs, weak as he was, and then wagged his tail and died."

I might doubtless give other instances of well-known men who were lovers of dogs, {230a} but I shall refrain from further quotation. The instincts of man are being purged of the brutality by which they are too often characterised, and what are clumsily called dumb animals have benefited side by side with human beings. It is not yet true that even a merciful man is merciful to his beast, but in England, at any rate, it is recognised that actual cruelty to animals is wrong, but even this is not always the case among other nations. My father used to tell us how, when his horse was exhausted, he lagged behind his S. American companion who shouted, "Spur him! Don Carlos, spur him! he is _my_ horse," and simply could not understand my father's motive. But I am glad to remember that even among rough people, in uncivilised ages, a sense of humanity to animals was not unknown. Busbecquius {230b} records that in Constantinople an angry crowd assembled before a shop in which was exhibited a living bird with its mouth forcibly opened to show its huge gape.

Cruelty is often said to be the outcome of ignorance and stupidity rather than of innate brutality. I wish I could believe this: in any case it is an evil which must be not merely held in check but rooted out. All lovers of animals owe a debt of gratitude to the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, not only for their great organisation for the prevention and punishment of brutalities, but also, and perhaps especially, for their guidance of public opinion.

* * * * *

THE END.

* * * * *

* * * * *

PRINTED BY W. HEFFER AND SONS LTD., CAMBRIDGE, ENLGAND.

NOTES.

{3} _Lundy's Land, and other Poems_, by Duncan Campbell Scott, Toronto.

{5} I have an antiquarian interest in the penny whistle as being a poor relation of the "recorder" of our forefathers.

{8} _A Naturalist's Calendar_, by Leonard Blomefield (formerly Jenyns). Cambridge University Press, 1903.

{9} _Life and Letters_, Vol. II., p. 114.

{13} This, the first Galton Lecture, was delivered before the Eugenics Education Society, February 16th, 1914, and is, by permission, reprinted, with some changes, from the _Eugenics Review_, 1914.

{15} The passage quoted is from Galton's autobiographic _Memories_, page 165. I have necessarily drawn largely on this delightful book, and have not generally thought it necessary to give references.

{21} Major L. Darwin had been President of the Royal Geographical Society.

{23} In _Memories_, p. 310, he criticises the statistical methods of this work.

{24} _Macmillan's Magazine_, XII., p. 327.

{25} _Hereditary Genius_, p. 2.

{26a} He had already allowed Professor Seward and myself to publish them in _More Letters of Charles Darwin_.

{26b} _Memories_, p. 290.

{27a} _Hereditary Genius_ p. 9

{27b} _Ibid._, p. 31.

{28} _Memories_, p. 305.

{29} _Macmillan's Magazine_, XII., p. 327.

{30} _Essays in Eugenics_, p. 1.

{31a} _Essays in Eugenics_, p. 1.

{31b} _Ibid._, p. 35.

{32a} _Essays in Eugenics_, p. 37.

{32b} _Ibid._, p. 42.

{34a} _More Letters_, II., pp. 43 and 50.

{34b} One Volume Edit. 1894, p. 617.

{35} _Macmillan's Magazine_, XII., p. 326.

{36} Evening lecture delivered at the Glasgow meeting of the British Association, September 16, 1901. Reprinted with alterations, from _Nature_, November 14, 1901.

{40} See their papers in the _Deutsch Bot. Ges._, 1900, and my summary in a paper read before the British Association, 1905.,

{41} The root must of course be in a glass of water, and therefore exposed to light.

{45} Cohn's _Beitrage_, 1894.

{47} Pfeffer, in the _Annals of Botany_, September 1894. Further details in Czapek's paper in _Pringsheim's Jahrb._, 1895.

{48} F. Darwin, _Annals of Botany_, December 1899.

{51a} _Life and Habit_, 1878.

{51b} Butler's term.

{53a} See James Ward, _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, i. 283

{53b} _Science and Culture_, Collected Essays, i.

{53c} _Loc. cit._ p. 288.

{56} Strictly speaking--florets.

{58a} C. Darwin. _Climbing Plants_.

{58b} _Galium aparine_.

{63a} _Literary Studies_, Vol. 1., p. 303.

{63b} _Memoir_, p. 155.

{64a} _Memoir_, p. 147.

{64b} _Ibid._, p. 132.

{66} _Memoir_, p. 148.

{73} Memoir, p. 348.

{74a} Not the Royal residence of that name.

{74b} Mr. Austen Leigh, _Memoir_, p. 140, quotes from Sir Denis Le Marchant that Fanny Price was a "prime favourite" of Sydney Smith. Mr. F. Myers I remember speaking to me of his especial admiration for _Mansfield Park_ and Fanny.

{82} _Times_, Dec 6, 1910, _Educational Supplement_.

{85} See, however, a footnote in No. IX. of this volume, p. 141.

{94} _Studies in Literature_, 1891, p. 100.

{98} The military drum and fife band is spoken of as "the drums"; there is no such person as a fifer, he is described as a drummer.

{100a} _The Elements of Musick Display'd_, etc., by William Tans'ur, Senior Musico Theorico, London, 1772, p. 103.

{100b} It is a pleasure to express my indebtedness to Mr. Cockerell, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, for his kindness in searching, in my interest, for old illustrations of the pipe and tabor. I have given some account of them in an appendix to this essay.

{102a} Kemp's _Nine Daies Wonder_: _Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich_, by A. Dyce, Camden Society, 1840.

{102b} See Strutt's _Sports and Pastimes_, Edit. 2, 1810, Plate XIV., p. 124.

{103a} Welch, Christopher. _Six Lectures on the Recorder and other flutes in relation to Literature_, 1911, p. 255.

{103b} Recorders used to be known as flutes, while what we call flutes were described as German or transverse flutes. Purists desire to revive this nomenclature, and would call the taborer's pipe a flute or fipple-flute.

{104a} For details of the fingering see the appendix to this article.

{104b} Praetorius, _Organographia_, being the second volume of his _Systagma Musici_, 1618, where a figure is given in Plate IX. See Breitkopf and Hartel's reprint of Praetorius, also Galpin's _Old English Instruments of Music_, 1910.

{105a} See also Mahillon, _Catalogue descriptif et analytique du Music instrumental du Conservatoire royal de Bruxelle_, 1909, Vol 2, p. 282.

{105b} _Harmonie Universelle, contenant la theorie et la pratique ce la musique_, by M. Mersenne, Fol. 1636-7, Vol II, p. 232.

{105c} Stanford and Forsyth _History of Music_, 1916, p. 44.

{106} _Op. Cit._ 1912, Vol 4, p. 214.

{107} See p. 267.

{108a} Mr. Galpin, however, uses another grip; he crooks the little finger and presses against the lower end of the pipe, of course without occluding the bore at all. In the early drawings reproduced by Strutt (see _ante_ p. 102) the taborers show as a rule three fingers only. This is practically Luca della Robbia's grip, since the little finger could hardly show in these small illustrations. In Welch's book on the Recorder (p. 195) is a figure (reproduced from Mahillon) of a Basque holding his 3-holed pipe in a different way, viz., with the ring finger underneath and the little finger unemployed. I find it impossible to hold the pipe in this manner.

{108b} Various editions appeared from 1661 to 1683. See Welch, _loc. cit._, p. 61.

{109a} Mr. Galpin says that they are found on an ancient Egyptian drum.

{109b} Mahillon's _Catalogue_, iii., p. 377.

{110a} A German writer has suggested that this position allows the musician to beat the drum with his head!

{110b} According to Mahillon, _Catalogue_ iii., p. 377, to play the tabor and pipe is called in Provencal "tutupomponeyer."

{115} Reprinted by permission of the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press from _The Makers of British Botany_.

{116a} In 1699 Newton was made Master of the Mint and appointed Whiston his deputy in the Lucasian Professorship, an office he finally resigned in 1703 (Brewster's _Life of Newton_, 1831, p. 249).

{116b} "There, if anywhere, his dear shade must linger," Trevelyan, _Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay_ (1 volume edit. 1881, p. 55).

{117} Black's discovery of CO2, however, was published in 1754, seven years before Hales died, but Priestley's, Cavendish's and Lavoisier's work on O and H was later.

{118a} 1837, III. p. 389.

{118b} _Vegetable Staticks_, p. 346.

{119} Sachs, _Geschichte_, p. 502. Malpighi held similar views.

{120} Sachs, _Geschichte_, p. 499.

{121} Quoted by Caroc, in his paper read before the Cambridge Archaeological Society on _King's Hostel_, etc., and "Printed for the Master and Fellows of Trinity College," in 1909.

{122} He also held the living of Farringdon in Hampshire where he occasionally resided.

{123a} _Dict. Nat. Biog._

{123b} With a certain idleness Pope reduces him to plain Parson Hale, for the sake of a rhyme in the _Epistle to Martha Blount_, 1, 198.

{124} The original reads "deigned not," an obvious slip.

{125} This he does by means of a network of threads .25 inch apart. Pfeffer, _Pflanzenphysiologie_, ed. 1, 1. p. 142, recommends the method and gives Hales as his authority.

{126a} _Pflanzenphysiologie_, 1865 (Fr. Trans. 1868), p. 254.

{126b} He gives it as 15.8 square inches, the only instance I have come across of his use of decimals.

{126c} Arbeiten, II. p. 182.

{126d} See Sachs' _Pflanzenphys_. 1865 (Fr. Trans. 1868), p. 257, where the above correction is applied to Hales' work.

{127a} _Vegetable Staticks_, p. 5.

{127b} _Ibid._, p. 14.

{128a} _Vegetable Staticks_, p. 41.

{128b} Janse in _Pringsheim's Jahrb_. XVIII. p. 38. The later literature is given by Dixon in _Progressus Rei Bot._ III., 1909, p. 58.

{129a} Compare F. von Hohnel, _Bot. Zeitung_, 1879, p. 318.

{129b} This is also shown by experiment xc, _Vegetable Staticks_, p. 123.

{130a} The method by which Hales proposed to record the depth of the sea is a variant of this apparatus.

{130b} _Vegetable Staticks_, p. 92.

{130c} According to Sachs (_Geschichte_, p. 509) Ray employed this method.

{130d} Other facts showed that the "gapped" branches did not behave quite normally.

{131a} He refers (p. 141) to what is in principle the same experiment (see Fig. 27) as due to Mr. Brotherton, and published in the _Abridgement of the Phil. Trans._ II. p. 708.

{131b} He notices that the swelling of the bark is connected with the presence of buds. The only ring of bark which had no bud showed no swelling.

{133} It appears that Mayow made similar experiments. _Dict. Nat. Biog._ s.v. Mayow.

{134a} _History of Chemistry_, 1909, I. p. 69.

{134b} Hales made use of a rough pneumatic trough, the invention of which is usually ascribed to Priestley (Thorpe's _History of Chemistry_, I. p. 79)

{135a} He speaks here merely of the apples used in a certain experiment, but it is clear that he applies the conclusion to other plants.

{135b} _Vegetable Staticks_, p. 313. It should be noted that Hales speaks of organic as well as inorganic substances.

{137a} The above account of Hales' connexion with the Royal Gardens at Kew is from the _Kew Bulletin_, 1891, p. 289.

{137b} I am indebted to Sir E. Thorpe for a definition of _statical_ "Statical (Med.) noting the physical phenomena presented by organised bodies in contradiction to the organic or vital." (Worcester's _Dictionary_. 1889.)

{138a} _Arbeiten_, I.

{138b} Borelli, _De Motu Animalium_, Pt. II. Ch. xiii. According to Sachs, _Ges. d. Botanik_, p. 582, Mariotte (1679) had suggested the same idea.

{138c} Nageli, _Starkekorner_, p. 279.

{139a} See his _Philosophical Experiments_, 1739.

{139b} _Geschichte d. Botanik_, p. 515 (free translation).

{140} An Address on the occasion of the opening of the Darwin Laboratories at Shrewsbury School, October 20, 1911.

{141a} In the _Life and Letters of Charles Darwin_, Vol. I., are given my father's autobiographical recollections. He wrote (pp. 31-32): "Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than Dr. Butler's school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught, except a little ancient geography and history." This seems to be an exaggeration, as the following list shows. It is taken from Samuel Butler's _Life and Letters of Dr. Samuel Butler_, 1896, Vol I., p. 196. The "weekly course of instruction for the fifth and sixth forms, under Dr. Butler," is given, and the items which are not classical are as follows:--

_Monday_.--English History follows Grecian and Roman history. The rest of a very full day is classical.

_Tuesday_.--Half-holiday. All classical except that the Masters of accomplishments attend in the afternoon.

_Wednesday_.--All classical.

_Thursday_.--Half-holiday. All classical except a "Lecture in algebra" for the sixth and upper fifth forms.

_Friday_.--All classical.

_Saturday_.--All classical except "Lecture in Euclid to sixth and upper fifth."

{141b} Charles Darwin's home at Shrewsbury.

{152a} Reprinted, with corrections (by the kind permission of the Syndics of the University Press), from Vol. v. of Sir G. Darwin's _Scientific Papers_. The biographical sketch of my brother is reproduced in a somewhat abbreviated version and does not contain Prof. E. W. Brown's contribution.

{152b} The third of those who survived childhood.

{152c} At Maer, the Staffordshire home of his mother.

{153} _Life and Letters of Charles Darwin_, Vol. 1., p. 319.

{156} Guillim, John, _A Display of Heraldry_, 6th ed., folio 1724. Edmonson, J., _A Complete Body of Heraldry_, folio, 1780.