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The strangeness of the experience frightened him at first, but with each experiment he had grown more confident, more skilled, until at length he found that he could throw a singularly articulate voice into the jaws of the old plow-horse, while his brothers, accustomed to his queer vocal tricks, were convulsed with laughter at the bizarre quadrupedal views of life thus elicited.
For a period of many millions of years the world of vertebrate life continued quadrupedal, or where a variation from this structure took place the fore limbs remained to a large extent organs of locomotion. Finally a true biped appeared. For a period of equal duration the mental progress of animals was exceedingly slow. Then, with almost startling suddenness, a highly intellectual animal appeared.
They were stupid, sluggish, unwieldy creatures, swollen parasites upon a luxuriant vegetation, and we shall easily understand their disappearance at the end of the Mesozoic Era, when the age of brawn will yield to an age of brain. The next order of the Deinosaurs is that of the biped vegetarians, the Ornithopods, which gradually became heavily armoured and quadrupedal.
As it approaches, it turns suddenly up from its quadrupedal position, takes off its hat, shows a broad, stout, legless torso, with a vigorous chest and a ruddy face, as of a person who has come half-way up from below the steps through a trap-door, and with a smile whose breadth is equalled only by the cunning which lurks round the corners of the eyes, says, in the blandest and most patronizing tones, with a rising inflection, "Buon giorno, Signore!
My Dog-man imperceptibly slipped back to the dog again; day by day he became dumb, quadrupedal, hairy. I scarcely noticed the transition from the companion on my right hand to the lurching dog at my side.
Numerous were the thrashings inflicted by Buctoo on them for tobacco thieving, but the thefts did not diminish. As my object in coming into these dreary fastnesses was to get on terms of familiarity with the quadrupedal rather than the bipedal inhabitants, I will leave the Bhootias, and proceed to describe my rencontres with the equally civilized four-footed denizens.
It is a bad plan to make a dog repeat too frequently a trick which he obviously dislikes, and insistence on your part may do great harm. The Poodle is exceptionally sensitive, and is far more efficiently taught when treated as a sensible being rather than as a mere quadrupedal automaton. He will learn twice as quickly if his master can make him understand the reason for performing a task.
Another accomplishment, at which not a few of the fast fellows excel, is that of imitating upon a key-bugle various animals, in an especial manner the braying of an ass: when the fast fellows drive down to the Trafalgar at Greenwich, the Toy at Hampton Court, or the Swan at Henley upon Thames, the bugle-player mounts aloft, the rest of the fast fellows keeping a lookout for donkeys; when one is seen, a hideous imitative bray is set up by the man of music, and his quadrupedal brother, attracted by the congenial sound, rushes to the roadside mutual recognition, with much merriment, is the result.
Once the grasping power was gained, the first step of change from the quadrupedal to the semi-erect attitude was completed. The process may have begun in the effort to fit the sole of the foot to the rounded surface of boughs; or its first stage may have been in the seizing of overhead branches with the flexible hand; or both influences may have acted simultaneously.
The supper over, and the attendant gone, the negus still left, Waife lighted his pipe, and, gazing on Sir Isaac, thus addressed that canine philosopher: "Illustrious member of the Quadrupedal Society of Friends to Man, and, as possessing those abilities for practical life which but few friends to man ever display in his service, promoted to high rank Commissary-General of the Victualling Department, and Chancellor of the Exchequer I have the honour to inform you that a vote of thanks in your favour has been proposed in this house, and carried unanimously."
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