Abstract
NOT having seen any reference to Cowper's famous hares in any of the notices under this heading that have appeared in NATURE, I am induced to refer to them, the more so as the creature is rarely credited with much gratitude or intelligence. My information is from Tegg's edition of “The Life and Works of William Cowper,” p. 633. Describing, at this place, the capers of his favourite hare named “Puss,” who “would suffer me to take him up and to carry him about in my own arms,” our poet adds that “he was ill three days, during which time I nursed him, kept him apart from his fellows, … and by constant care, &c., restored him to perfect health. No creature could be more grateful than my patient after his recovery, a sentiment which he most significantly expressed by licking my hand, first the back of it, then the palm, then every finger separately, then between all the fingers, as if anxious to leave no part of it unsaluted; a ceremony which he never performed but once again upon a similar occasion. Finding him extremely tractable, I made it my custom to carry him always after breakfast into the garden. … I had not long habituated him to this taste of liberty before he began to be impatient for the return of the time when he might enjoy it. He would invite me to the garden by drumming upon my knee and by a look of such expression as it was not possible to misinterpret. If this rhetoric did not immediately succeed, he would take the skirt of my coat between his teeth and pull it with all his force”. He “seemed to be happier in human society than when shut up with his natural companions,” and if these traits do not betoken something more than instinct, it is hard to say where this ends and intellect begins.
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CURRAN, W. Intellect in Brutes. Nature 22, 339 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/022339b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/022339b0
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