When young, they are sprightly, handsome, light and even graceful, but they soon lose those qualities either from age or bad treatment, and become slow, stubborn, and headstrong. The ass is ardent in nothing but love, or rather when under the influence of that passion he is so furious that nothing can retain him; he has been known to exhaust himself by excessive indulgence, and die some moments afterwards. As he loves with a kind of madness, he has also the strongest attachment to his progeny. Pliny assures us, that when they separate the mother from her young, she will go through fire to recover it. The ass is also strongly attached to his master, notwithstanding he is usually ill-treated; he will scent him at a distance, and distinguish him from all other men. He also knows the places where he has lived, and the ways which he has frequented. His eyes are good, and smell acute, especially with regard to females; his ears are excellent, which has also contributed to his being numbered among timid animals, who it is pretended have all long ears, and the hearing extremely delicate. When he is overloaded, he shews it by lowering his head and bending down his ears: when greatly abused, he opens his mouth and draws back his lips in a most disagreeable manner, which gives him an air of derision and scorn. If his eyes are covered, he remains motionless; and when he is laid down, and his head so fixed, that one eye rests on the ground and the other being covered with a piece of wood, he will remain in that situation without endeavouring to get up. He walks, trots, and gallops like the horse, but all his motions are smaller and much slower. He can however run with tolerable swiftness, but he can hold it only for a small space, and whatever pace he uses, if he is hard pressed, he is soon fatigued. The horse neighs, but the ass brays; which he does by a long, disagreeable, and discordant cry, by alternative discords of sharp and flat. He seldom cries but when he is pressed by love or appetite. The she-ass has the voice clearer and more shrill; those that are gelded, bray very low, and though they seem to make the same efforts, and the same motions of the throat, yet their cry cannot be heard very far. Of all the animals covered with hair, the ass is least subject to vermin, which apparently proceeds from the peculiar hardness and dryness of the skin, and for the same reason he is less sensible than the horse to the whip, and stinging of flies.