The swallow’s nest and the nightingale’s song make Plutarch pause and wonder; he believes, with Aristotle, that the old nightingales teach the young ones, remarking that nightingales reared in captivity never sing so well as those that have profited by the parental lessons. He gives a word to the dove of Deucalion which returned a first time to the ark because the deluge continued, but disappeared when it was set free again, the waters having subsided. Plutarch confesses, however, that this is “mythical,” and though he admits that birds deserved the name by which Euripides calls them of “Messengers of the gods,” he is inclined to attribute their warnings to the direct intervention of an over-ruling deity of whom they are the inconscient agents.
It is a pleasure to find that Plutarch had a high appreciation of the hedgehog—the charming “urchin” which represents to many an English child an epitome of wild nature, friendly yet untamed, familiar yet mysterious. He does not say that it milks cows—a calumny which is an article of faith with the British ploughman—but he relates that when the grapes are ripe, the mother urchin goes under the vines and shakes the plants till some of the grapes fall off; then, rolling herself over them, she attaches a number of grapes to her spines and so marches back to the hole where she keeps her nurslings. “One day,” says Plutarch, “when we were all together, we had the chance of seeing this with our own eyes—it looked as if a bunch of grapes was shuffling along the ground, so thickly covered was the animal with its booty.”
Dogs that threw themselves on their masters’ pyre, dogs that caused the arrest of assassins or thieves, dogs that remained with and protected the bodies of their dead masters, clever dogs, devoted dogs, magnanimous dogs—these will be all found in Plutarch’s gallery. How high-minded, he says, it is in the dog when, as Homer advises, you lay down your stick, even an angry dog ceases to attack you. He praises the affectionate regard which many have shown in giving decent burial to the dogs they cherished, and recalls how Xantippus of old, whose dog swam by his galley to Salamis when the Athenians were forced to abandon their city, buried the faithful creature on a promontory which “to this day” is known as the Dog’s Grave. Very desolate was the case of the other animals that ran up and down distraught when their masters embarked, like the poor cats and dogs which helped the English soldiers in the block-houses to while away the weary hours, and which, by superior orders, were left to their fate, though their comrades in khaki were anxious enough to carry them away. As a proof of the affection of the Greeks for their dogs Plutarch might have spoken of the not uncommon representation of them on the _Stelæ_ in the family group which brings together all the dearest ties between life and death.