What Do Animals Feel ?
Outside Bredwardine on the Wye, where Francis Kilvert, that passionate oountry-lover, lies buried, I once saw a car run over a young weasel, while the family headed by the mother was crossing the road. A minute or two later the mother emerged from the long grass at the side of the road and, picking up her dead infant by the neck, dis- appeared back into the grass with it. As a. preliminary to eating it ? Some readers may recall the incident described by Hudson in Far Away and Long Ago in which the mate of a pair of migratory geese was accideitMlly killed. The male stayed beside her until-Re starved to death. Llewelyn Powys in Ebony find Ivory recorded an example of a male zebra driving off the jackals .from his mate; wantonly shot by Powys himself. Such instances could be multiplied. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance the phenomena of nature were interpreted in terms of a higher equation • in our own time their meanings are read in terms of the lower. The latter method may to a wiser genera- tion be regarded as even more erroneous than the former.
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