Dissertations Moral and Critical Author:James Beattie Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A P. IV. Remarks on the Memory of Brutes.- I SHALL now make a few remarks on the Memory of Brutes. That many of them have this faculty, is undeniable. We f... more »ind, that whelps, as well as children, once burned, avoid the fire; and that horfes, oxen, and dogs, and many other animals, not only have their knowledge of nature enlarged by experience, but alfo derive from man various arts and habits, whereby they become ufeful to him, in war, hunting, agriculture, and other employments. Moft of thefe creatures know their fellows, and keepers: nay dogs and horfes learn to do certain things, on hearing certain vords articulated. Beagles obey the voice of the hunter, and purfue, or de- fift from purfuit, as he commands ; and the war- horfe is acquainted, not only with the voice of his rider, but alfo with the fummons of the drum and trumpet; as hunting-courfers are, with the opening of the hounds, and the found of the horn. Goats, fheep, and oxen, and even poultry, of their own accord, repair in the evening to their homes : parrots acquire the habit of uttering words; and finging birds, of modulating tunes: and bees, after an excurfion of feveral miles (as naturalifts affirm) return, each to her hive ; nor does it appear that they mi flake another for their own, even where many are ftand- ing contiguous. Lions fpare him who attends them, when they would tear in pieces every thing elfe: doves fly to the window where they have been fed; and the elephant is faid to poflefs a degree of remembrance not many removes from rationality. I might mention too the dog of Ulyfles, who knew his mafter after twenty years abfencc ; for the ftory is probable, though it may not be true: as well as what is recorded in Aulus Gel- , lius, of Androclus and his lionf: who, having received mutual civilities ...« less