resolution, determined to make the rebel muscles obedient-to see and hear him "Struggle with the rising fits," and sit up and say that he will take his medicine. And there he is, apparently calm—the attendant approaches with the cup-he receives it—you almost think, so much does he seem to have his nerves under command, that he will drain it. He lifts it to his parched lips, his haggard eye rolls, the rising spasms overpower him-"I can't." he faintly utters, and falls back in agony. We dare not go on : it is too horrible! But we may point out, especially as there is a good deal of misunderstanding upon the subject, the usual symptoms that denote the rabid dog; for it frequently happens that a dog is destroyed as mad, when he has no disease of the kind about him; whilst, on the other hand, the rabid animal is often suffered to live and deal destruction around. It is an error to suppose that a mad dog always shows aversion to water, as the name of the disease implies; he will, on the contrary, sometimes lap it-nay, swim across a river without manifesting any of the horror that marks the disease in man. The most sure symptom is a complete alteration of temper from the mild and the familiar to the sullen and the snarling; he snaps at all objects animate and inanimate, and gnaws them. Even in this state his behaviour often continues unaltered to his master or mistress; and hence the cases which have arisen from having been licked by the tongue of such a dog, on some part of the face or hands where the skin had been broken. Though he goes wildly about, apparently without an object, foaming at the mouth generally, and snapping as he proceeds, he rarely gallops, but mostly keeps to a sullen trot with his tail down. The best representation of this mad gait that we have seen, is in "Bewick's Quadrupeds," where the vignette at p. 330, of the edition of 1820, gives a very correct idea of the rabid animal in its progress. What produces this cruel disease in the dog, is a mystery: it can hardly be hardship or ill-treatment, for it frequently happens to pets "Bred with all the care That waits upon a fav'rite heir." Just see what Sonnini says of the dogs at Rosetta, where, though "repelled by man, to whose personal use nature seems to have destined them, they are, nevertheless, incapable of deserting him." In modern Egypt the dog is considered an unclean beast, not to be touched without subsequent purification, and, therefore, carefully shunned by the Mahommedans. "There are few cities in the world," writes Sonnini, “which contain so many dogs as those of Egypt; or at least, there is no one which has the appearance of containing more, because they are there constantly assembled in the streets, their only habitation. There they have no other supplies of food but what they can pick up at the doors of houses, or scramble for by raking into filth and garbage. The females drop their young at the corner of some retired and unfrequented street; for a disciple of Mahomet would not permit them to approach his habitation. Continually exposed to the cruel treatment of the populace; massacred sometimes without mercy by an armed mob; subjected to all the inclemency of the elements; hardly finding the means of supporting a wretched existence; meager; irritated to madness; frequently eaten up by a mange which degenerates into a species of leprosy; hideous even from the forlornness of their condition; those miserable animals inspire as much compassion, as they excite contempt and indignation against the barbarians among whom they live. It is undoubtedly astonishing that amidst a life of misery and suffering, many of those dogs should not be subject to attacks of the hydrophobia. But this malady, rare in the northern parts of Turkey, is still more so in the southern provinces of that empire, and is totally unknown under the burning sky of Egypt. I never saw a single instance of it; and the natives whom I consulted on the subject, had not so much as an idea of the disease." We willingly drop this distressing part of our subject; but we must not conceal that though hydrophobia generally makes its appearance in man between the thirtieth and fortieth days after the communication of the virus, fatal cases that have occurred after a lapse of eighteen months are on record; and there is not wanting high authority for the assertion that a person cannot be considered perfectly safe till two years at least have passed, reckoning from the time when the injury was received. CATS. "I come, Graymalkin!" MACBETH. IF dogs are the friends of mankind, their companions in their walks, and their partners in the pleasures of the chase, cats may be considered as the chosen allies of womankind. Not that the sterner sex have not shown as much fondness for these luxurious quadrupeds as the ladies have exhibited, ay, even those who cradle the blind offspring of their Selimas, and adorn the pensive mother's neck with coral beads. Mahomet, Montaigne, Richelieu, and Johnson, were not exactly simpletons, though it might be difficult to make a modern dandy understand the kindness of heart that sent the lexicographer out to purchase oysters for his favourite Hodge, when he was old and sick, and fancied no other food. When we reflect that these purring associates of the Englishman's fireside are so closely connected with the untranslatable word "comfort"-a word that has neither name nor representation out of this "nook-shotten isle," and its snuggeries of sea-coal and hearth-rugs with which their satisfactory song harmonizes so soothingly; that they are the guardians of the store-room, the larder, the dairy, and the granary; that they "Watch o'er the weal of Rhedycinian cheese; For heads of houses guard, and lords in lawn;" we are led to inquire the cause of the hatred, even where no antipathy exists, which rages against this maligned and persecuted race. The gardener and the gamekeeper, the latter especially, have some grounds for their deadly enmity; the schoolboy too often looks upon them as having been brought into the world for the express purpose of being shod with walnut-shells, thrown off the church tower with blown bladders tied to their necks, sent to navigate the horsepond in a bowl, there to withstand the attacks of a fleet of water-dogs, and, finally, killed by his terrier ;* whilst *We cannot resist the temptation of recording a case of tempered schoolboy vengeance. Some few years ago, horticulture was the fashion, not to say passion, at a certain school; and the master thinking, wisely enough, that the boys might have worse pursuits, encouraged the zeal with which they cultivated their little gardens. Whether any of these horticulturists afterwards belonged to the agricultural society of a celebrated college in one of our universities, whose members, in their zeal for improvement, one fine night ploughed up the lawn in the middle of the quad with sofas, and planted the Principal out of his own chapel, with shrubs and trees transplanted from his own garden, does not appear; the schoolboys, at all events, dibbled, and delved, and sowed, and weeded, and were kept out of mischief. But who shall reckon upon happiness? There was a tremendous bluffvisaged, dark-coloured tabby cat, belonging to a little spiteful tailor, who lived hard by. This provoking beast nightly tore up their crocuses, polyanthuses, and hyacinths, and laid low whole rows of mustard and cress: nor was there not a suspicion that in the destruction of the last-mentioned articles puss was assisted by his master; for though the flowers were prostrate, the esculents for the most part vanished altogether. The boys went up in a body with a complaint to him of the shears, reciting the damage done, and warning him that he should keep his cat at home at night. Their just indignation was treated with derision by the little tailor, who received the remonstrance seated at his door, pipe in mouth. Two or three of the strongest of the youths were for executing summary justice on the irritating schneider, and quenching him and his pipe together at the pump; but they were restrained by a sage among them, who, looking unutterable things at the smoker, informed him that he had better look out, or he would not know his cat again when he saw it, and left him in no very comfortable state of mind. After the exhibition of much ingenuity and many failures, the trespasser was, at last, caught, bagged, and carried into a room, where a convention of outraged gardeners immediately proceeded to consult upon his doom. Two or three of the greatest sufferers loudly gave their voices for death: others were for sparing his life, but curtailing his tail of its fair proportions, and otherwise maltreating him so that he should never be the same cat again. At length the sage, who was merciful but determined, begged to be heard. He said that the tailor was in fault more than the cat, which did but after its kind in frequenting gardens, if suffered to go abroad at night; and as he had by him some of the best fyn zegellak (wel brand en vast houd) for electrical experiments, he proposed to make the unhappy bagster a warning to all tailors to keep their cats from wandering. He explained his plan, which was adopted nem con., and having dissolved sealingwax quant suff. in spirit of wine, dipped a brush therein; and while two assistants, who were bit and scratched worse than Hogarth's actress in the barn, held the victim, painted the struggling Tommy all over of a bright vermilion, with a masterly hand. The tableau vivant was then set down, and home he bolted in the gloaming. How the cat entered the tailor's house, and what the tailor thought of the advent, no one knew; but it was observed that the tailor's hair became rather suddenly gray. For two days nobody saw either him or his cat. On the third, he, remembering the threat of the philosophic gardener, walked into the schoolroom, at high school-time, with his vermilion quadruped under his arm, held him up before the master, and asked, with a solemn voice and manner, "if that the murderous cat-skinner only sees in them subjects appointed to be flayed alive. These are their open and avowed foes: their secret enemies are scarcely less numerous. Why is this? The answer may be, perhaps, found in a dark and disgraceful portion of the criminal annals of this country, of which more anon. But we must first say a word or two, touching the natural history of this familiar beast: no easy task; for the origin of the house cat, like that of many other of our domestic animals, has puzzled the learned; and the stock from whence it sprung, is still, in the opinion of some, a problem for the zoologist to solve. That the cat was domesticated among the Egyptians, we have pregnant evidence, not only in their custom of shaving their brows when their cats died a natural death, but also in the mummies found in their catacombs* (no pun meant), and in the figures of these animals on the monuments of that ancient country,perched on the top of the Sistrum, for instance, and supposed to represent the moon-probably from the following mythological legends. Jove, tired of state affairs and Juno's tongue, sought, one day, a little relaxation in the company of his pretty Latona twins, Apollo and Hecate. To amuse them, he bade them try their hand at creation, and do something towards filling the empty globule, now called earth. Apollo set his wits to work, and produced MAN. No one likes to be outdone; so, as Diana saw at a glance that there was no going beyond her brother's handiwork, she tried to turn the laugh against him, and concocted a sort of H.B. of her brother's production, in the form of an ape. No one likes to be laughed at: so Pol cut his sister's fun rather short, by turning up a ramping lion. Di, however, was not to be frightened, and played another card of ridicule in the shape of a cat. Apollo, upon this, got into good humour, and, determined to beat his lively antagonist at her own weapons, made a mouse,which Hecate's cat immediately ate up. The lovely sex always have it hollow in matters of finesse. Her success at this game seems to have pleased the Goddess of Wisdom: for when Typhon and his giant host pressed the gods so hard, that they were compelled to flee into Egypt, and save was the way a cat ought to be treated?" The master, who was taken by surprise, burst out into a fit of laughter, in which he was, of course, joined by the boys. The crest-fallen tailor, without staying further to question, turned round, and with the port of a much-injured man, walked out with his rubicund cat under his arm, as he had walked in. * Herod. 11., c. 66, 67. K |