14 AUGUST 1909, Page 18

DO ANIMALS REASON P

[To THE EDITOR. OF THE " SracrAvoa."1

SIR,—An old man in the village in which I reside went one day a few weeks ago to look at some young heifers in a field some way from his house. One of the heifers was a bad. tempered animal, and upon the old man getting near to her, she put her head down, butted him, knocked him over, and then knelt upon him. In all probability the old man would have been killed had it not been for the fact that one of the other heifers, upon seeing the old man's plight, came up and charged the offending heifer, moving her a few yards away from the prostrate old man. The other heifer then stood between the old man and the offending heifer for a few minutes, when the former again charged the latter, and was thus able to more her a little further away. This was repeated three times until the offending heifer was far enough away to enable the old man to crawl through the hedge into a place of safety. I have heard before of a third heifer inter- fering in a fight between two others, but never of a heifer protecting a human being from an onslaught by one of its