That all animals, however fierce and ungovernable may be their natural dispositions, have nevertheless implanted by a wise Providence within their breasts a certain awe, a vague, indefinable dread of man, which, although meeting with him for the first time, will induce them to fly his presence, or at all events shun encounter, is, we think, a fact which no observer of nature will deny. This instinct of submission to human beings exists among all creatures, and the greater the intelligence they possess, the more powerful is its operation. When we meet with instances of a nature calculated to overturn this theory--such as wild animals attacking and destroying travellers, or preying upon the shepherd as he guards his flock, with others of a similar description--instead of hastily presuming upon the falsity of the above position, we should rather seek for some explanation of the reasons which in these cases checked for the time the workings of the animal’s natural instinct. These will be for the most part easily enough discovered, if sought for in a spirit of impartial inquiry. The lion and the tiger are prompted by natural instinct to shun the haunts and the presence of man--they choose for their lairs dark and impenetrable forests--they select for their habitation a situation whither man has not as yet approached--and according as the work of settlement and cultivation advances, they retreat before it into their dark and gloomy fastnesses. Does the traveller encounter a lion or a tiger? The animal is prompted by nature to give place to him, and usually slinks off, growling with the thirst for blood, but still fearing to attack MAN. The shouts of women and children suffice to scare the fierce and rapacious wolves, as they descend in troops from the mountains to appease their hunger with victims from the flocks of the shepherds. The bear meets with the bold hunter or woodcutter in the American backwoods, but is never known to attack him, unless the instinct of submission to man is overruled by other instincts for the time more imperative in their demands. True, if the lion be _hungry_ when the traveller shall cross his path, he will sometimes, though such instances are of rare occurrence, attack and devour him. True, if the wolves are unable to satisfy their appetite by other means, they will attack and devour human beings; and if the bear be likewise rendered furious by the calls of hunger, she will treat the woodsman with little ceremony. Still these instances only show that hunger overcomes fear--an explanation which no one can refuse to admit. What indeed will not the gnawings of hunger effect? Has it not caused fathers to butcher their sons, mothers to devour the infant at their breast? When capable, then, of overcoming the most powerful of instincts, maternal affection, and that too in the teeth of reason, how can we wonder at its overcoming an inferior instinct, and that in a brute animal where there existed