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In speaking of animals whose sex is not known to us, or not regarded, we assign to them gender either masculine or feminine, according, as it would appear, to the characteristic properties of the animal himself. In speaking, for example, of the horse, a creature distinguished by usefulness and a certain generosity of nature, unless we be acquainted with the sex and wish to discriminate, we always speak of this quadruped as of the male sex; thus,

“While winter’s shivering snow affects the horse

With frost, and makes him an uneasy course.”—Creech.

In speaking of a hare, an animal noted for timidity, we assign to it, if we give it sex, the feminine gender; thus, “the hare is so timorous a creature, that she continually listens after every noise, and will run a long way on the least suspicion of danger: so that she always eats in terror.”

The elephant is generally considered as of the masculine gender, an animal distinguished not only by great strength and superiority of size, but also by sagacity, docility, and fortitude.