In order that such a change may be effected is it not necessary that the Ferine principle of the panther and the owl, or the noxious principle of the bramble and the nettle, be first taken away, and thereby the truly human and innocent principle be implanted?
"The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love"
Emanuel Swedenborg
Having taken for his text the fourteenth verse of the fifty-ninth psalm, "And at evening let them return; and let them make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city," he dwelt first upon the condition and character of the eastern dog as contrasted with those of our dogs; pointing out to his hearers, that so far from being valued for use or beauty or rarity, they were, except swine, of all animals the most despised by the Jews-the vile outcasts of the border land separating animals domestic and Ferine-filthy, dangerous, and hated; then associating with his text that passage in the Revelation, "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city; for without are dogs," he propounded, or rather asserted, that it described one variety of the many punishments of the wicked, showing at least a portion of them condemned to rush howling for ever about the walls of the New Jerusalem, haunting the gates they durst not enter.
"Malcolm"
George MacDonald
We killed some wild Ferine creatures at the foot of these hills; but, except two things, like to nothing that we ever saw before, we met with nothing that was fit to eat.
"The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton"
Daniel Defoe
