Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1876 — Precious Pets. [ARTICLE]

Precious Pets.

Man haa beau distinguished from brutes aa a cooking animal. Rut he has another characteristic almost equally distinctive. He keeps pets. It is true that sometimes this characteristic is Shared by individuals of other races. A horse has been known to become attached to the stable cat and to pine in the absence of pussy. So, too, dogs have allowed a corner of their kennel to some stray animal domesticated about the house, and odd friendships have been cemented between creatures as different as a goat and a jackdaw, or a rabbit and a foxhound. Such brotherhood between tame beasts, all living in a state more or less artificial, is only as natural aa the talking of a parrot, the piping of a bull finch, or the trained labor of a canary taught to wozkfor its living by drawing its wfliter with a bucket and a chain. We never heard of a cat that loved a dear cricket to cheer with friendly chirpings her leisure on the hearth. No puppy has been known to lavish tender caresses on the radiant head of an iridescent bluebottle. The hen whose limited intellect reels before the watery instincts of a brood of ducklings is the victim of parental affection laboring under a base deception. But men pet many creatures besides their offspring, supposititious or other. It is true that a modem naturalist finds in an ants’ nest certain well-cared-for beetles, and endeavors in vain to account for such a mysterious tact. Are the beetles scavengers or are they pets? Or are the ants endued, like men, with superstition, and do they venerate, like the ancient Egyptians, a coleopterous insect? Starlings show a preference for certain sheep. Every crocodile may be supposed to be the favorite of a particular lapwing. But these instances answer rather to the sportsman’s predilection for a well-stocked moor or the fiy-flsher’s love for a shady pool. No kitten leads about a mouse with blue ribbon round the little victim’s neck, as a child caresses the lamb which it may one day devour. The child shows its petting instinct at the earliest age and loves a woolly rhinoceros as soon as it loves sugar and apples. Long before the baby can speak, as soon as it can open and close its tiny hands, it longs for something soft and warm, and above all something moving, which it may grasp and pinch at will. No worsted poodle, however cunningly contrived in the toy country, can compete for a moment with a real puppy. The pleasure of breaking all the legs from off all the quadrupeds in Noah’s Ark pale in insignificance beside the rapture of pulling pussy’s tail and halfblinding a living terrier. The cat and dog endure from the infant the tortures of Damien without complaint, and purr or wag their tail at each fresh infliction as a new manifestation of regard. Vivisection is a trifle compared with some of the unwitting cruelties of the nursery; but the victims seem to understand that their pains are not intended, and it would be well if a like self-sacrificing enthusiasm could be fostered in the scientific laboratory. That people do keep pets and do misuse them is a plain and unquestionable fact. Why they keep them is* another and much more difficult question. Some, it is true, have a dislike to the destruction of animal life. Cardinal Bellarmine would not disturb the fleas which got their livelihood in his famous beard. Others, again, have been driven to love a swallow from the mere loneliness of prison life, and the only reason for doubting the truth of the legend which connects the name of Bruce with a spider is that similar tales have been told of other famous men. The story of a Lady Berkeley who insisted on keeping her merlins to molt in her bed-chamber, and her husband’s consequent displeasure, occurs among the annals of tlie fifteenth century. Little dogs figure on brasses; and the names of “Terri,” “Jakke,” and “Bo” have come down to us as memorials of pels beloved 500 years ago. Cowper, beside his hares, petted all kinds of animals, and remonstrated in verse with his spaniel for killing a fledgling. Oldys apostrophized a lly, and Burns a mouse. We think it was Carnot, in'the Reign of Terror, that lavished caresses on his dog, while lie sent hundreds of human victims to the slaughter. In fact, there are few people come to mature years who at some time of their life have not loved a dear gazelle or other domestic animal, and been gladdened by its affectionate eye. A taste which is so peculiarly human may be humanizing if properly directed. The child, indeed, will rob a nest to satisfy its longing for a pet. But it is easy to demonstrate the cruelty of interfering with natural laws, and the speedy death of the halffledged nestling demonstrates clearly enough the futility of the childish aspirations. The sympathies of Bill Sykes, callous as he was, were awakened toward his dog, and even Charon may be supposed occasionally to bestow a friendly pat on 4 one of the heads of Cerberus. Although it has often been remarked that love of the horse accompanies, if it does not cause, the degradation of many a man, yet it would be hard to ascribe the iniquities of a blackleg to any true love of the animal on which he lays his money. Doubtless the horse of Caligula preferred his oats ungilt, and it is the uncertainty of racing rather than any fault of the racer that attracts rogues to Newmarket and Epsom. A horse would run quite as well, the race would be even more often to the swift, if betting could be abolished. And our prize costermongers and cabmen find kindness to ttieir animals, like honesty, the best policy. The donkey that is starved and beaten seldom favors his driver with more than a spasmodic gallop, while the sleek ass we now occasionally notice in our streets draws more than his own weight of heavy men at a cheerful and willing frot. The principle on which fteiShre kept is, however, sometimes difficult to find. We were all horrified, lately, to read at' an old lady who starved a household of cats, and every Indian traveler tells shocking tales of the cruelty of the Hindoo to the humpbacked cow which he worships as adivinity. Cruelty to pets is only one aspect of the matter. There are people, especially in towns, whose kindness to their pets is exercised at the expense of their neighbors. So long as they are an amusement to their owners without being a nhisance to the public no one can complain. There are, it is true, crusty people who wbuld like the world better if it contained neither kittens nor babies. But it cannot do real harm to anybody that an old lady should turn rabbits loose in her garden in order to reduce the excessive^corpulence of her darling pugs by a little wholesome coursing. It is good for her pets and does not hurt the neighbors.' —Saturday Revie to. Thx current number ‘ of Nature tells of a deluded hen who hatched and reared a peacock. As that mother hen gazed upon the budding tail of her infant offspring it must haveoccurred to her, in moments of depression and anxiety, that possibly aha had the jim-jams. — Ulob*- Democrat. Thaws are forty-three breweries in Kan-