[Oct. 1, 1892.]
I lately met some friends who had with them a little dog, called Vic, who had adopted the family of a cat in the house, and, while in possession, would not let the mother come near her kittens. The kittens were kept in a very tall basket, and Vic would take them in her mouth, and jump out with them one by one, and then carry them into the garden and watch over them, carrying them back in the same way after a time; at other times, lying contentedly with them in the basket. Of course Vic had to be forcibly removed when the adopted family required their mother's attention for their sustenance. I also have met a friend who saw a hen-hawk, who was in a cage, mothering a young starling. Three young, unfledged starlings were given the hawk to eat. She ate two, and then broodled the other, and took the utmost care of it. Unhappily, the young starling died; and from that moment the hawk would touch no food, but died herself in a few days.
The same friend was on a mountain one day, when a sheep came up to him, and unmistakably begged him to follow her going just in front, and continually looking round to see if he was following. The sheep led him at last to some rocks, where he found a lamb fast wedged in between two pieces of rock. He was able to liberate the lamb, to the evident joy of the mother.
I myself once saw a cat "broodling" and taking care of a very small chicken, which, being hatched first of a brood, had been brought into a cottage and placed in a basket near the fire. It managed to get out of the basket, and hopped up to the cat, who immediately adopted it.
Wm. Walsham Wakefield.
HAVE ANIMALS A FOREKNOWLEDGE OF DEATH?
[April 30, 1892.]
In a recent Spectator there is a quotation from Pierre Loti to the effect that "animals not only fear death, but fear it the more because they are aware that they have no future." Pierre Loti is a brilliant novelist, but I am not aware that he is a scientific naturalist, and I trust his idea is a mere chimera. Loti would take from the brutes the one privilege for which men may envy them, and endows them with a knowledge of the aftertime that we have only by revelation. However, two common-sense naturalists have published their belief that the lower animals have a foreknowledge of death, and one of them goes so far as to give an account of an old horse committing suicide. He says the animal frequently suffered from some internal disease, and that it deliberately walked into a pond, and, putting its nostrils under water, stood thus till it dropped dead from suffocation. The incident, I think, is easily explained. Many horses drink in the manner described, and in old horses heart-disease is not uncommon. I imagine the stoppage of respiration caused a sudden and natural death from heart-disease.
I should like to ask naturalists who think animals know that they must die, where they draw the line. They must stop somewhere between a dog and a dormouse. Poets have made far more frequent allusion to the subject than naturalists, and they may be quoted on both sides. Philip James Bailey, in illustration of his contention that hope is universal, says: "and the poor hack that sinks down on the flints, upon whose eye the dust is settling, he hopes to die." But we have on the other hand Shelley's Skylark, with its "ignorance of pain," because it differs from men who "look before and after." Wordsworth's little girl of eight knew less than her dog, if she had one, for, says the poet, "what could she know of death?" I admit that when the carnivora have crushed their prey to death they cease to mangle them; but I fancy that is only because there is no more resistance; and a bull will trample on a hat and leave it when it becomes a shapeless mass. The nearest thing I ever saw to an apparent foreknowledge of death, was in the case of that least intelligent of dogs, a greyhound. I had to shoot it to prevent useless suffering from disease. It followed me willingly, but when I led it to a pit prepared as its grave it instantly rushed off at its best speed. I suggest that it saw instinctively something unpleasant was about to happen, but it does not follow that death was present to its mind. Domestic poultry will furiously attack one of their number that struggles on the ground in its death-agony. They do not dream of death; they think its contortions are a challenge to combat.