ANIMALS IN SICKNESS.
" Why, let the stricken deer go weep, The hart nogalled
THE circumstances that attend the illness and death of wild animals are perhaps less well known than any
other part of their history. Yet, when we consider that animal life, though in some species of great duration, is naturally brief, and liable to an infinite number of accidents without remedy, and sudden dangers unforeseen, the subject of the last days of the nobler sorts of beasts• has a certain pathetic interest. No doubt all animals, from the healthy and natural lives they lead, have strange powers of self-cure in case of accident. Those whose pro- fession it is to prepare the skeletons of wild beasts, large and small, for museums and laboratories, speak with sur- prise of the number of injuries and fractures which the
bones exhibit, but which have set themselves in a rough but effective fashion. But the " chapter of accidents " in animal life spares none, from the stags which die with horns locked together on the mountain-side, to the locusts which impale themselves upon the barbed wire of the Transvaal farms, or the cicalas which rend their wings upon the thorns of the mimosa. Death by violence seems to be the rule in the lower forms of animal life, except in the case of sudden plagues or changes of season. Only to the largest quadrupeds has human fancy conceded the boon of a natural and perhaps painless death ; and the remote, un- trodden jungle, where the elephants go to die, lies still among the "undiscovered countries."
The saddest side of these millions of unrecorded deaths, from the human and humane point of view, is that the crea- tures, for the most part, suffer unaided, and die alone. There is, however, good reason to believe that this is not always the case; and that there are many instances of animal sympathy, and some of animal aid, for animal suffering. On the other hand, it must he admitted that there is often a strong and apparently natural impulse among animals, as among savage men, to hasten the death of a sick comrade, which in some cases takes the form of deliberate and premeditated murder of the sufferer. If even human sentiment at the sight of fellow- creatures' suffering be analysed, the two emotions of pity and disgust are constantly at war. Pity is generally prior, but, except in the highest natures, it weakens with time. " Pity," says Cobbett, " is not a lasting emotion ; " and instead of pity passing to love, disgust often becomes dislike, after a long contemplation of disease and deformity. The ruder the state of society, the harsher becomes the law, for we may assume that the dislike of the weak and sickly by the healthy and vigorous is an indirect, if most unpleasing form, of the law of natural selection. Maternal affection must, of coarse, be excepted from this general tendency. So long as any young creatures are dependent upon their parents, the tendency of the old is to give most to the young who need most. The devotion of bird or animal varies directly with the helplessness of their offspring. But we must look further, and consider the relations of the non-related, the conduct of society to the individual, and of different species to one another. In so doing, we may find something parallel to our own development; for domestication, the animal equivalent
to civilisation, does certainly produce an increased tendency
towards the emotions of pity and benevolence. But in animal communities, there seems to exist little sense of pity when the weakness of a member inconveniences or endangers the safety of the whole. Bulls and wild stallions will fight for the herd, but that is the price of their own supremacy. The wounded and sick are usually driven away, and perhaps killed. The wild cows of Chillingham Park, and the deer at Windsor, still hide their calves and fawns. As in the days of the Psalmist, the calving hind " discovereth the thick bushes," and does not venture to show its fawn till it can keep up with the herd. Shakespeare, in As You Like It, does no injustice to the general indifference of deer to their injured comrades ; and the stag, " left and abandoned by his velvet friends," which excited the pity of Jaques, suffered the general fate of wounded deer. But there are exceptions to the rule. The scene of the wounded stag, attended by the hinds, which Sir Edwin Land- seer painted in his beautiful picture called "Highland Nurses," was, we believe, actually witnessed by the painter or his host. But the Storch Gericht condemns without mercy those that cannot join in the Southern migration ; ducks and canaries peck sick and ailing birds to death, and pigs are born bullies, the smallest of the litter—the " petment," as it is called in East Anglia—being invariably bitten, and deprived of its food. Carnivorous animals rarely injure a sick or wounded member of their tribe, though wolves, when pressed by hunger, devour the weakest, and jackals will at once assemble and tear to pieces a wounded member of the pack. But we lately heard a curious instance of the instinct to destroy the injured among the larger cats. Some rough ground in Oudh was being driven by beaters, when a cheetah appeared before one of the guns and was badly wounded. Another cheetah appeared immediately after, and came up to the first, which it seemed to urge to follow it. The wounded cheetah was unable to move, and the second, on discovering this, sprang on it, caught it by the throat, an& killed it, and was shot as it bounded away after this deliberate murder. Monkeys, with some notable excep- tions, are some degrees worse than savage men in their treat- ment of the sick. On the new Jumna Canal at Delhi, monkeys swarm in the trees upon the banks, and treat their sick comrades in true monkey-fashion. The colony by the canal, being overcrowded, and as a consequence unhealthy, did, and probably does, still suffer from various unpleasant diseases. When one monkey is so obviously unwell as to offend the feelings of the rest, a few of the larger monkeys watch it, and taking a favourable opportunity, knock it into the canal. If it is not drowned at once, the sick monkey is pitched in again after it regains the trees, and either drowned, or forced to keep aloof from the flock. At the Zoological Gardens, the monkeys torment a sick one without mercy; and unless it is at once removed from the cage, it has little chance of recovery. The small monkeys bite and pinch it ; the larger ones swing it round by its tail; and when quite exhausted, or dead, as many monkeys as can find room sit on its body. Frank Buckland's monkeys, so far as we remember, exhibited considerable affection towards one another when ill. But that may have been due to the civilising influences of his society. Generally speaking, monkeys mope and seek solitude when sick. But Sally,' the chimpanzee at the Zoo, during her last illness behaved exactly as a human being might in similar circumstances. While the large gibbon in the next cage, which died just afterwards, retired to the furthest corner, and refused all assistance, Sally' came to the bars in front, where she could most easily receive her medicine and food, and took her balsam of aniseed for bronchitis, as her keepers dictated. Only when very ill did she retire to her kennel, and even then would reach out her hand to the " doctor." But there is not much faith in " physicking " at the Zoo. Prevention is better than cure,—though one bear generally takes castor.oil, which it likes, when suffering from a bad throat; and a very fine bird, the African hornbill, would allow medicine to be given to it by its keeper. A lady-visitor was good enough to leave a prescription to cure the savage Indian wild dogs of mange. But as she left no directions as to whether the remedy was for internal or external application, the dogs were allowed to cure themselves by taking " sulphur-baths " in straw sprinkled with the remedy.
Domestication modifies, and often changes, the instinct of wild animals to persecute, or at least neglect, the sick or injured, perhaps because the lessened strain of the struggle for existence leaves room for sentiment to grow. Both dogs and cats often aid their kind when sick, and strange alliances spring up between pets of different species. Perhaps the best-known instance is that of the raven which Dickens saw at Hungerford, which used to carry bones to a broken-legged retriever ; and the quickness with which dogs learn that their master is ill, and show sympathy, is well established. The following anecdote of aid given by one animal to another has not, we think, been published. An elephant-train was on its way from Lucknow to Seetapore, and one elephant, becoming lame, knelt down and refused to go on. The elephant next in the column stopped of its own accord, and when driven on, turned back, and began, without instructions, to remove some part of the load. Instances of aid rendered by birds to others in distress may also be found, showing that the instinct of sympathy exists, and takes form in action, when the causes of the suffering are such that the fellow-bird can understand, and see its way to remedy. The writer was informed that some years ago, at a hawking-party on Salisbury Plain, a falcon was flown at a carrion-crow, which it struck, after a long flight, and the two birds came down like a parachute to the ground. The party galloped up, and were about to dismount to take up the falcon, when the mate of the crow suddenly descended from a great height, with such velocity that the wings made a whizzing sound like that of a falling stone, and dashed on to the falcon. The force of the blow struck the hawk from its quarry, which was uninjured by the grapple in the air ; and both crows flew off unhurt into a copse near. In this case the crow clearly understood the cause of the danger, and the possibility of a rescue when the falcon was on the ground and least able to act on the offensive. But the courage and devotion which prompted it to overcome the natural dread which the falcon inspires, and the added terror of a party of mounted men in pursuit, place the crow's claim to admiration on a very high level. A pair of terns have been seen to aid a wounded companion on the water. In this case they lifted it from the surface, and tried to assist it to fly. The terns, like the carrion-crow, not only showed sympathy, but were able to translate it into action. Other birds, either less intelligent or less indifferent to the danger which the presence of a human spectator suggests, exhibit the same concern for wounded mates or companions by flying round them or alighting near the sufferer. St. John mentions a case of a sheldrake which would not leave its wounded mate ; and peewits will sometimes return and hover over wounded birds, especially early in the year, before the full-grown young have learnt the extreme caution which marks their behaviour later in the season. But perhaps the most remark- able instance of " aid to the weak "recorded of birds was shown by a brood of young swallows. These had left the nest, and were sitting in a row along the gutter, while the old birds fed them alternately as they flew past. One of the young ones, weaker and more backward than the rest of the brood, was unable to raise itself sufficiently to attract the notice of the parent-birds as they flew past, and two of the other young were seen to close in on either side, and by shuffling under- neath its body to raise it until it was on a level with the others, and able to receive its share of food. With such instances to the contrary, it cannot be maintained that the animal instinct is uniformly selfish towards the sick and weak. The emotion of sympathy exists, though circumstances are usually too strong for its development.
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