XXVIII. cap. II. Aelian. De Nat. Animal, lib. xiv. cap. xviii.

t The Hippomanes is a plant which grows in Arcadia: by which young coursers and swift mares are excited to furious desires. — (Theocrit. EidylL ii. vers. 48 — 49.) Junius Philargjrrus (in Georgic, lib. iii, vers. 280.) confines the effect of this plant to the mares who eat of it. Nevertheless, perhaps, the odour which this vegetable exhaled was the principle of its properties, and they were enabled to make use of it to work the assumed miracle which has been noticed.
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buted more generally to the power of music. Plato assures us that song and melody can tame savage ani- mals, and even reptiles.* We might be tempted to believe that, in this case, the philosopher had allowed himself to be governed by the not very philosophic live- linesSp of his imagination, or that he had only repeated an •opinion, which we might suppose was not received from, nor foimded upon observation. The charm of music, however, has consoled elephants in their captivity, when they have &llen into the power of man ; and, in their domestic state, the execution. of measured airs and har- monised chords is sufficient, it is said, to make them stand erect upon their hind legs-f In Lybia, savage mares are so sensible to music, that it has been used as a method of taming them.| Even some fish, we are told, are not free from its power, and it has made the capture of them much more easy ;|| and moderns, less disposed to be credulous, are nevertheless forced to acknowledge the power which music exercises over tortoises and spiders.^ Its influence over elephants has been frequently verified before our eyes, in public exhibitions. A tra-
* Plato, de Rep. Hb. ii.
t Aelian. De Nat, AnimaL lib. xii. cap xliv. et lib. ii. cap. ii.
t Aelian. De Nat. AnimaL lib. xii. cap. xliv.
II Aeliaa. De Nat. Animal, lib. vi. cap. xxxi. — xxxii.— Itis perhaps upon this account, that fishermen, who are generally ex- tremely superstitious, sing a peculiar crone in dredging oysters. —Ed.
§ We are not aware of the ground upon which this remark of our author is founded ; as the organ of hearing in spiders has not been discovered ; and that of the tortoise is not well adapted for the delicacy of musical sounds. — Ed.
332 INFLUENCE OVER ANIMALS.
veUer has also informed us that he saw, mth surprise, the cumbrous Hippopotamus so delighted by the measured noise of a war march, as to follow the drums, swimming the whole length of a river. Large Lizards and Iguanos are still more susceptible of harmonious sounds. A song, and even soft and measured whistling, has more than once been able to stop them, until they were under the hand of the hunter.*
Cats, who are overcome or frightened by sounds that are too piercing, are agreeably affected by music, if the softness of its modulations are proportionate to the sus- ceptibility of their organs. Dogs, on the contrary, appear to be sensible to none but mournful music. Loud and piercing sounds draw from them only prolonged bowlings.
In a temple, a lyre, which passed for, that of Orpheus, was preserved : an amateur bought it, persuaded that in touching it he should, like the first possessor of the in- strument, see animals running round him charmed by the melody. He made a triad of it in a remote place, and soon perished, having been torn to pieces by savage dogs.f It was not only, as Lucian pretends, his pre- sumption which cost him his life^ but his imprudence; and the forgetfulness of a physical effect which daily experience recals to our recollection, and which would place the life of an organ player in danger, if out of the reach
* Lac^p^de. Histoire Naturelle des Omdruphiea Ovipares. art. JjrtMwe.— Foumier-Pescay. Dictionnaire des Sciences m^dicales. art. Musique,
t Lucian. " Centre un Ignorant qui achetait heaucoup de Livres,*' (Euvres completes de Lucien, tome, iv. page 274 — 276.
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of succour. He made the harsh sounds of his instrument to resound in the midst of a troop of wild dogs.*
The influence of modulated sounds upon animals must have been more studied formerly than it is in the pre- sent day ; the experiments were more varied, and their results more extended. Let us remember that, in the teniples, they sought but and tried every method of work- ing what they desired to be regarded as miracles ; and whlBit wonder could be more seducing or more worthy of being represented in the celebration of those mysteries, of which Orpheus was one of the prin-
*.The influence of loud and harsh sounds on dogs, is well exemplified in the following anecdote, recorded by Sir David Brewster, in his Letters on Natural Magic* " When peace was proclaimed in London, in 1697, two troops of horse were dis- mounted, and drawn up in line in order to fire their voUies. Op- posite the centre of the line was the door of a butcher's shop, where there was a large mastiff dog of great courage. The dog was sleeping by the fire ; but when the first volley was discharged, it immediately started up, ran into another room, and hid itself under a bed. On the firing of the second volley, the dog rose, ran several times about the room, trembling violently, and appa- rently in great agony. When the third volley was fired, the dog ran about once or twice with great violence, and instantly fell down dead, throwing up blood from the mouth and nose." (p. 216.) It may be said, that the dog, in this instance, might have been dreaming, and connected the noise of the firing, with some inci- dent in his dream, sufficient to excite great alarm : but we are told that he was a dog of ^reat courage, and although he might be greatly agitated on being awakened by the firing, yet it is not likely that this alarm would continue to such an extent as to cause death. We must, therefore, refer it to the great susceptibility of dogs for sound ; and the eiSFect of so loud a concussion of the fdr on his nervous system. — Ed.
334 INFLUENCE OVER ANIMALS.
cipal founders, than that which r^sed the brilliant mi- racle of that musician ?
We are ignorant how far the moral development of animals extends. We, who in our relations with them, obtain everything by terror, by constraint, by hardship, and by punishments, rarely or never seek to know what may be obtained from them by mildness, by caresses, or by amiable feelings. We seem practically to follow the absurd opinion of Descartes ; we treat animals as if they were only machines. Less enlightened nations than our^ selves treat them as sensible beings, as creatures not less susceptible of kindness than men ; beings who may be led by good treatment, and by that part of their feelings and affections of which these nations know how to take advantage. What can be thusobtained,renders probable all that ancient authors have related of savage animals which have become domesticated, and have even been rendered affectionate. Cynocephali have lost their love of unsettled independence ; and bulls their wild and suspicious tem- per ; even lions and eagles have lowered their pride, and exchanged it for a submissive attachment to the man from whom they have received kindness.*
* Aelian. DeNat. AnimaL lib. ii. cap. xl. lib. v. cap. xxxix. lib. VI. cap. X. lib. xii. cap. xxiii. — The Editor saw the exhibition of Van Amburg, when he visited London in 1843. He fear- lessly entered the grated boxes, ot dens, containing tigers and other savage animals, who seemed to regard him with no evil intentions: and, indeed, were completely submissive to his con- trol. The method which this man employed to tame these animals is not known; but it is probable that it was partly gratitude, and partly fear which held them in submission. He regularly fed them himself, and their hunger was well satiated
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Goats and crows were brought into the temples to declare the oracles ; but the learned animals that are fre- quently offered to public curiosity, show us what part of the will of heaven charlatanism could draw from these singular interpreters.
We may hesitate, therefore, before denying the existence of the tamed tigers, which so many traditions inform us figured in the f6tes of Bacchus ; and which, bred at Thebes, attended in the temples of that God, opening and closing their frightful jaws, that there might be poured into their throats, at long intervals, draughts of wine,* with which prudence probably mixed some sopo- rific drugs.
The employment of carrier pigeons did not take its rise in civilized Europe; its antiquity is so great in the East, that the national writers affirm it was used
before his public exhibitions. The ferociousness of wild carnivo- rous ftnimnla may be regarded as a gift of Providence, to enable them to obtain their subsistence. They occasionally fight with each other ; and the conquered may even be devoured by the con- queror ; but it does not follow that their dispositions are naturally cruel, or that the ferocity which they display is exerted for other purposes than in procuring their prey when hunger prompts. Even ftnJTnalft usually supposed to have a natural enmity to each other^'^as the hawk and the linnet, if well fed, display no disposi- tion to exert animosity. A striking proof of this remark is daily exhibited in the streets of Ijondon, by a person who has a cage containing cats, mice, hawks, linnets, rabbits, and various other animals, living together in perfect amity. It is, therefore, very possible that a man, being exposed to wild beasts, soon after they have been well fed, would remain unattacked ; and thus an appa- rent miracle be produced. — ^Ed.
* " Expectant que cibos, fuso que horrenda supinant ora mero.** (Stat. Th^baid. lib. vii. vers. 575—576.)
336 INFLUENCE bVER ANIMALS.
in the Pantapole of Palestine. Among the Arabs two months were sufficient for the education of a pigeon : bad treatment had no part in it ; and the pigeons were so well brought up that, according to the direction in which they were placed, they carried messages to three different places.* The Greeks were not ignorant of this art. A dove flew from Pisa to the isle of Egina, to announce to the father of Taurosthenus the victory which that wrestler had won, the same day, in the Olympic games. This fact, though not common, appeared too isimple for the friends of the marvellous ! In detailing the event, instead of the winged messenger they substituted a phantom, an apparition.! Ancient history informs us of more than one victory, the news of which had arrived almost at the moment in which it was accomplished ; and, probably by an analogous process, even in places distant from that in which the battle had been fought. The means of communication being kept secret, its rapidity appeared a miracle due. to the intervention of some su- pernatural agent.
If it were proposed to a European to tame a Cro- codile, and if he undertook the task, he would probably employ hunger and the privation of sleep ; and he would
* The Carrier Dove, (translated from the Arabic by Sylvester de Sacy. in 8^ Paris, 1805.) pages 36, 52, & 74.
t Aelian. Var. Hist. lib. ix. cap. ii. Pausanius Eliac. lib. ii. cap. IX. — In the last days of the Roman republic, Hirtius em- ployed the same method to communicate his movements to Deci- mus Brutus, besieged in Modena. {Frontin Stra, lib. iii. cap. XIII.) The impatience of swallows to fly back to their nests, has caused them to be employed in a similar manner. Pliny has quoted two examples of it. (Hist, Nat, lib. x. cap. xxv.)
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endeavour to weaken the animal until he rendered him docile or incapable of resistance. Would he succeed ? We may reply in the negative. Mr. Laing* saw, at the house of the King of Soolimas,t a tamed Crocodile as gentle as a dog ; but this animal was a prisoner, shut up in a pond in the palace. Would it not, we may inquire, regain its natural ferocity were it set at libierty ? The Scheik of SuakemJ having caught a young Crocodile, tamed it and kept it in a pond near the sea. The animal grew very large, but did not lose its docility : the Prince placed himself upon its back, and was carried a distance of more than three hundred steps by it.| In the isle of Sumatra, in 1823, an immense Crocodile established itself at the mouth of the Beaujang : it had chased away all the other Crocodiles ; and devoured all those who ventured to return. The inhabitants rendered it divine homage, and respectfully supplied it with food. " Pass," said they to the English missionaries who relate the fact, and who seemed afraid to approach the formi-r dable amphibious creature, " pass on, our God is mer- ciful." In fact, it peaceably regarded the European's boat, without giving any signs either of fear or anger
* Laing's Travels among the Timaunies, the Kouranko, and the SooUmana, p. 353.
t The Soolimas are a negro race, occupying the country near the river loliba, on the coast of Sierra Leone. They are a short, muscular, and warlike people. — Ed,
X A sea-port town in Nubia, on the west coast of the Red Sea. —Ed.
II Vincent Le Blanc. Voyages, — 1^. partie. chap. ix. tome i. p. 39.
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338 INFLUENCE OYER ANIMALS.
or of a wish to attack it.* This trait recals to recol- lection the sacred Crocodiles, which the people of Upper Egypt worshipped. We might ask, isthat a fact? Can it be possible ? Did not the priests, every day, run the chance of becoming the prey of their diyinities, of pondrous and fierce animals, formidable on the earth, and still more so in the water? Far from this being the case, we see how easy it is to tame the worshipped animals, who thus re-assured, by long experience, against the fear of the aggressions of man, and the anxiety of want, lose their savage instinct. There was, therefore, probably little exaggeration in what was said of the sacred Crocodiles : by a disciple of the Egyptian priests, " The Soukh-oos is kind, for he never harms any ani- mal."t
* John Anderson, Missionary to the eastern side of Sumatra, in the year 1823. Nouvelles Anntdes des Voyages, tome xxx. p. 260. — The crocodile of the Ganges is also very easy to tame. Voyages aux Indes Orkntalest by P. Paulin de Saint Barth61emi, tome iii, p. 281—282, note.
t Damasc. Isidori Vit, ap» Photium. Bihl, Cod, 242. — Soukh- os; this name, according to M. Gfeofiroy de St. Hilaire, designated a distinct species of crocodile. The Egyptians detested the Crocodile Temsah, a voracious animal, which caused them to suffer frequent injuries : but they liked the Soukh, a species of a less size, rarely terrible to men : and which, showing itself on earth before all the other Crocodiles, at the swelling of the Nile, seatned to announce and to bring the benevolent inundation, of which it became the sacred symbol. Upon the banks of the Ganges the Indians also distinguished two species of Crocodiles,one ferocious and carnivo- rous, the other perfectly innocent. (Aelian. De nat. anim, lib. xii. cap. x^i.)
Th^ reptile thus worshipped is supposed by M. Gteoffroy d^ St. Hilaire not to have been the common Crocodile, Croebdilus
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The agility of the movements of serpents, the enormous strength of these reptiles; the difficulty of distinguishing at the first glance those whose bite is not venomous from those which are poisonous, is sufficient to explain the fear and horror which serpents inspire ; and the idea of supernatural power attached to the
vulgaris, the Temsah of the Eg^tians, but the Monitor, or Suchus ; an opinion, however, which Cuvier combats, because he affirms that the Monitor is as ferocious as the common Crocodile. In ancient Egyj^t, the Crocodile was one of the symbols of Typhon, the evil Deity ; and some of the bronzes bear the representation of a man, supposed to be Horus (whose father, Isis, was slain by Typhon,) standing on a Crocodile. The tame Crocodiles, as stated in a former note, were daily fed with roasted meat and cakes, and had occasionally mulled wine poured down their throats. Their ears were ornamented with rings of gold and pre- cious stones, and their fore feet adorned with bracelets. As such was the treatment of the sacred Crocodiles, there is no dif&culty in accounting for their docility. The most ferocious animals will not attack their ordinary prey, when well fed. The following account is given of a tame Alligator, in a private letter, quoted in a review of the Erp^tologie Gen&^le, and affords an excellent proof of the foregoing remark. The vnriter having ridden a consi- derable distance to a village about eight miles from Kurracheej in Scinde, and feeling thirsty, went to a pool to procure some water. " When I got to the edge," says he, " the guide who was with me pointed out something in the water, which I had myself taken to be the stump of a tree ; and although I had my glasses on, I looked at it for some time before I found that I was standing within three feet of an immense Alligator. I then perceived that the swamp viras crowded with them, although they were all lying in the mud so perfectly motionless that a hundred people might have passed without observing them. The guide laughed at the start I gave, and told me that they were quite harmless, having been tamed by a Saint, a man of great piety, whose tomb was to be seen on a hill close by ; and that they continued to obey the
z 2
340 INFLUENCE OVER ANIMALS.
art of handling them, and of rendering them power- less. The biographer of Pythagoras, anxious to exalt his hero, calls our admiration to the philosopher's exercising a power equal to that of Orpheus upon animals, and handling with impunity serpents, dangerous to all
orders of a number of Fakeers, who liyed around the tomb. I pro- ceeded to the village immediately^ and got some of the Fakeers to come down to the water with a sheep. One of them then went close to the water with a long stick, with which he struck the ground, and called to the Alligators, which immediately came crawling out of the water, great and small together, and lay down on the bank all around him. The sheep was then killed and quartered ; and while this was going on, the reptiles continued crawling until they had made a complete ring around us. The Fakeer kept walking about within the circle, and if any one attempted to en- croach, he rapped it unmercifully on the snout with his stick, and drove it backwards. Not one of them attempted to touch him. although they showed rows of teeth that seemed able to snap him in two at a bite. The quarters of the sheep were then thrown to them, and the scene that followed was so indescribable that I shall not attempt it ; but I think if you will turn to Milton, and read ' his account of the transformation of Satan and his crew in Pande- monium, you may form some fiaint idea ' how dreadful was the din.' In what manner these monsters were first tamed I cannot say. The natives, of course, ascribe it to the piety of the Saint, who is called Miegger Pier, or Saint Alligator." •
Another reason might be assigned for the impunity with which persons have gone amongst Crocodiles, namely, that in some places, •as in the Nicobar islands, there may be two species of Crocodiles ; one small, fierce, and rapacious ; the other large, less fierce, and preying only upon carrion. This anecdote is, at all events, quite suflSicient to give authenticity to the stories of the ancients respect- ing the Crocodile. The £g3rptian God, Souk, is represented with the head of a Crocodile. — ^£d.
* Edinburgh Review, vo1..lxxx. p. 428.
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but himself.* Jugglers who exhibit in a similar man- ner in public, profit by their facility in inspiring fear, to extort money from the curious; and this singular kind of pilfering has been repeated often enough to draw down the animadversion of the law upon its authors.f
There were always supposed to be a great number of serpents, the bite of which was not of a venomous cha- racter which easily admitted of their being tamed. Such were doubtless those immense, but harmless serpents, that were seen in many ancient temples ;{ the serpent, fifteen feet long, which Ajax, son of Oileous, had tamed,|| and which followed him like a faithful dog, and the enormous reptile that was taken alive by the soldiers of Ptolemy Auletes,^ and which became as gentle as a domestic animal. Tamed adders, perfectly docile and affectionate, have been seen a thousand times in Europe. In Timauni a serpent was shown to the traveller Laing,^ which, at the order of the musician, curved itself, rolled itself, and jumped, as obediently and adroitly as the best disciplined animals.** Among the negroes of Dutch
* lamblich. in Vit. Pythag, cap. xiv. et cap. xviii.
t *' In drculatores qui serpentes circumferunt et proponunt, si cui, ob eorom metum, damnum datum est, pro modo admissi actio dabitur." Digest, lib. xlvii, tit. xi. § xi.
t Aelian. De Nat. Anim. lib. xiii. cap. xxxix. xv. — 321.