It is interesting to note the causes that conduce to a decided attachment of certain animals to man, or between one kind of animal and another.  It is notorious that attachments and aversions exist in nature.  Swallows, rooks, and storks frequent dwelling houses; ostriches and zebras herd together; so do bisons and elks.  On the other hand, deer and sheep, which are both gregarious, and both eat the same food and graze within the same enclosure, avoid one another.  The spotted Danish dog, the Spitz dog, and the cat, have all a strong attachment to horses, and horses seem pleased with their company; but dogs and cats are proverbially discordant.  I presume that two species of animals do not consider one another companionable, or clubable, unless their behaviour and their persons are reciprocally agreeable.  A phlegmatic animal would be exceedingly disquieted by the close companionship of an excitable one.  The movements of one beast may have a character that is unpleasing to the eyes of another; his cries may sound discordant; his smell may be repulsive.  Two herds of animals would hardly intermingle, unless their respective languages of action and of voice were mutually intelligible.  The animal which above all others is a companion to man is the dog, and we observe how readily their proceedings are intelligible to each other.  Every whine or bark of the dog, each of his fawning, savage, or timorous movements is the exact counterpart of what would have been the man’s behaviour, had he felt similar emotions.  As the man understands the thoughts of the dog, so the dog understands the thoughts of the man, by attending to his natural voice, his countenance, and his actions.  A man irritates a dog by an ordinary laugh, he frightens him by an angry look, or he calms him by a kindly bearing; but he has less spontaneous hold over an ox or a sheep.  He must study their ways and tutor his behaviour before he can either understand the feelings of those animals or make his own intelligible to them.  He has no natural power at all over many other creatures.  Who, for instance, ever succeeded in frowning away a mosquito, or in pacifying an angry wasp by a smile?

Desire of Comfort.—­This is a motive which strongly attaches certain animals to human habitations, even though they are unwelcome:  it is a motive which few persons who have not had an opportunity of studying animals in savage lands are likely to estimate at its true value.  The life of all beasts in their wild state is an exceedingly anxious one.  From my own recollection, I believe that every antelope in South Africa has to run for its life every one or two days upon an average, and that he starts or gallops under the influence of a false alarm many times in a day.  Those who have crouched at night by the side of pools in the desert, in order to have a shot at the beasts that frequent them, see strange scenes of animal life; how the creatures gambol at one moment and fight at another; how a herd suddenly halts in