Chapters on animals

Preface

Having been in the habit of loving and observing animals, as people do who live much in the country, I thought that possibly some of my observations, however trifling in themselves, might interest others whose tastes are similar to my own. In this spirit I wrote these chapters, describing what I had seen rather than what other writers had recorded. The book has therefore no pretension to system or completeness, but consists merely of desultory chapters, as its title indicates.

The illustrations, by two deservedly celebrated animal painters, Karl Bodmer and Veyrassat, will be found, it is believed, to add considerably to the value and interest of the volume.

P. G. H.

Contents

CHAPTER. PAGE.

I. THE LIFE OF THE BRUTE ... I

III. DOGS (continued) 32

Chapter I. The Life Of The Brute

READERS of Dean Stanley's Life of Dr. Arnpld will probably remember a passage, brief but highly interesting, in which reference is made to his feelings about the brute creation ; — ' In works of art he took but little interest, and any extended researches in physical science were precluded by want of time, whilst from natural history he had an instinctive but characteristic shrinking. " The whole subject," he said, " of the brute creation is to me one of such painful mystery, that I dare not approach it." '

Mystery indeed there is everywhere, and it is often painful ; but surely in shrinking from the contemplation of nature the loss is greater than the gain. That all animals are condemned at one period or another of their existence to undergo suffering, often very severe suffer*

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ing, and that in their utmost anguish they have no consolation from religious or philosophical ideas, that they have no hope beyond the limits of a day, and that their existence is most probably limited to the brief space between birth and death, — this is the dark side of their being, which we need not attempt to hide. But, on the other hand, the life of the brute has commonly one immense compensation in its favour, the perfection of the individual existence is so rarely sacrificed to the prosperity of the race. It is not necessary in order that one hippopotamus should cut his food conveniently that another hippopotamus should lead an unhealthy existence like a Sheffield grinder ; nor does the comfort of any bird's nest require that another bird should slowly poison itself in preparing acetates of copper, sulphurets of mercury, or oxides of lead. The pride and beauty of a brute are never based upon the enduring misery of another brute. The wild drake's plumage, splendid as it is, suggests no painful thought of consumptive weavers, of ill-paid lace-makers, of harassed, over- worked milliners ; and the most sensitive of us may enjoy the sight of it without painful thoughts, for it is God's free gift, causing no heart-burning of envy, no care nor anxiety of any kind. There is much slaughter in the world of brutes, but there is little slavery, and the killing is done with a merciful rapidity, ending life whilst its pulses still beat in their energy, and preventing infirmity and age. The brute creation has its diseases, but on the whole it is astonishingly healthy. It is full of an

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amazing vitality.* The more we study animals the more evident is it that they live for the most part in the heaven of exuberant health. That gladness which we seek, how often vainly, in all artificial stimulants, — in wine, tea, gin, tobacco, opium, and the rest, — the brute finds in the free coursing of his own uncontaminated blood. Our nervous miseries, our brain-exhaustion, are unknown to him. Has not one of the sweetest of our poets, who knew those miseries of the intellectual, poured forth in immortal verse his passionate longing for the ' clear keen joyance' of a skylark ? Which of us has not envied the glee of his own dog ? Human happiness may be deeper, but it is never, after earliest infancy, so free from all shadow of sadness or regret.

It is probable that Dr. Arnold's disinclination for the study of animal life, and his painful feelings regarding it, had their origin in a peculiarity of his which made him such an excellent schoolmaster — the intense pleasure with which he contemplated moral and intellectual advance, a pleasure which had for its shadow a feeling of intense disgust for incorrigibles. To a man with these feelings always highly-wrought, and even rather over-excited by the nature of his work, a man always anxious to make good Christians and cultivated gentlemen, the brute world must have seemed a very discouraging kind of material.

• This in consequence of the law, apparently pitiless, yet when seen in its large results most merciful, that the weak and diseased so rapidly die off, that the strong and healthy remain and propagate, whilst the organi. zations ill adapted for vigourous life perish and disappear.

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What changes nature may operate in millions of years, what marvellous developments may lead up gradually to higher orders of being, we need not attempt to estimate ; it is enough for us, that from the dawn of history the animals most familiarly known to us seem to have done the same things, and done them in the same way, as their successors in our own fields and on our own hearth-rugs. We have evidence that the donkeys of antiquity were obstinate and self-willed, and the donkeys of the nineteenth century are so still. But in this persistence of characteristics there is nothing, I think, to sadden us. The brute does not, it is true, aspire after the ideal, and his views, it must be confessed, are usually limited to the fullest and most immediate gratification of his appetites, but he has so many negative advantages that we may think and speak of him with cheerfulness. If he has not the support and consolations of religion it is because he does not require them, and he escapes the evils of theological rancour and persecution which have caused so much misery to mankind. He escapes, too, the meanness of hypocrisy, which is one of the least pleasing of the peculiarly human vices. So with regard to the politics of brutes — they are royalists, or republicans, or socialists, or they push to an extreme impossible for mankind the principles of independent individualism ; but whatever they are they know their own mind, and incur neither the evils of anarchy nor the perils of transition. How much weariness has there been in the human race during the last fifty years, because the human race cannot stop poli-

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tically where it was, and, rinding no rest, is pushed to a strange future that the wisest look forward to gravely, as certainly very dark and probably very dangerous ! Meanwhile have the bees suffered any political uneasiness, have they doubted the use of royalty or begrudged the cost of their Queen ? Have those industrious republicans, the ants, gone about uneasily seeking after a sovereign ? Has the eagle grown weary of his isolation and sought strength in the practice of socialism ? Has the dog become too enlightened to endure any longer his position as man's humble friend, and contemplated a canine union for mutual protection against masters ? No, the great principles of these existences are superior to change, and that which man is perpetually seeking, a political order in perfect harmony with his condition, the brute has inherited with his instincts.

The study of animals inclines men to a steady cheerfulness. All naturalists are cheerful men, unless there is something peculiarly sad or painful in the individual lot ; and even then the study of natural history has in many instances been known to supply an interest which enabled the sufferer to bear his affliction more easily. The contemplation of animal life may act at once as a stimulant and an anodyne. The abounding vitality of animals communicates a strong stimulus to those energies which we have in common with them, whilst on the other hand their absolute incapacity for sharing our higher intellectual vitality has a tendency to make us happily forget it in their presence. Your dog will run and jump with you as

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much as you like, but it is of no use to talk to him about your business anxieties or your literary ambition. I believe that most of the attractiveness of what is called ' sport,' is to be found in the happiness of association with the lower animals. Take away the animals from a hunt ; suppose that there were neither horses nor dogs, nor stag, fox, wild boar, or any other animal whatever, but that the men rode on velocipedes after a machine going by electricity — who does not at once feel that the deep charm of the chase would be gone? Few will deny that falconry, though far less destructive than shooting, was a more perfect sport ; for the falconer associated himself with the bird of prey that he had trained with hood and jesses and lure, and Watched its aerial evolutions. The pleasure of falconry was to be a spectator at one's own hours of a sight which every naturalist has occasionally witnessed in his rambles— the bird of prey in the exercise of his terrible function. The noble of the middle ages, who was a bird of prey himself by instinct and tradition, felt the deepest sympathy with the hawk, and carried him everywhere on his wrist as poor women carry their babies ; but the modern student of nature may sympathise with the hawk also, notwithstanding our modern tenderness. We may always sympathise with an animal, because the animal is sure to do his appointed work ; the business of the falcon being to destroy birds for his own sustenance, he does it without any infirmity of doubt. He hurls himself like a barbed javelin, and the sharp talon delivers its deadly stroke. Since the work, in Nature's order, had to

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be done, there is a satisfaction in seeing it done with that swiftness and decision, that perfect vigour and ability. So the old knights often took the falcon for a crest, and he sat in effigy on their helmets, tossed above the dust of the battle-field.

But the knight's sympathy or the sportsman's sympathy for animals is more narrow, though not more intense by reason of its narrowness, than the sympathy of the naturalist or artist Since falconry is dead the falcon would be doomed to extinction if gamekeepers had their way ; and the sportsman thinks that if an animal is not either good to hunt or be hunted, does not play the part either of hound or hare, there can be no sufficient reason against its total extermination. So the agriculturist has his way of considering animals, with his two categories — the beasts that can work for him and the beasts that can be sold to the butcher. But there is another way besides these, that of the observer who studies the aninal from some kind of interest in nature without reference to anything that it can do ft : him or produce for him. The selfish pre-occupation always hinders us from observing in the best and largest sense. Some excellent observers have been sportsmen and agriculturists ; this partly from accident, because they had land in the country, and partly from hereditary tendencies derived from sporting or agricultural ancestors: but it is possible to kill animals everyday, and make animals work all day long, and sell animals at every fair in the neighbourhood,withoutknowing very much more about their lives and characters than they know of

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yours and mine. I have seen men who had not the least insight into the characters of their own horses or their own dogs. It grates very unpleasantly on the feelings of any true lover of animals to see them treated as beings without any individuality of mental constitution. There are people to whom a horse is a horse, just as a penny postage-stamp is a penny postage-stamp ; that is, a thing which will convey a certain weight for a certain regulated distance. But any one who knows animals knows that a horse has as much individuality as a man. And the more we know, even of inferior animals, the more distinct does their individuality become for us. It is only our ignorance and our indifference which confound them. The two bay horses in your carriage look exactly alike to the people in the street, but the coachman and groom could establish contrasts and comparisons after the manner of Plutarch. With the varieties of canine character we are all of us tolerably familiar, because our dogs are more with us, happily for us and for them. Yet how difficult it is to arrive at any true conception of the mind of a lower animal ! The moment we begin to reason about it a thick cloud rises and comes between. We speak of them habitually as if they had human feelings : a dog is spoken of very much as if he were a child, yet he is not a child ; and we give to horses many capacities and attributes which horses never possess. There is an insuperable difficulty in imagining the mind of an animal ; we lend him words, which he never uses, to express thoughts which could not occur to him. We are constantly misled

7 HE LIFE OF THE BRUTE.

by the evident clearness of the minds of animals, by the acuteness of their perceptions in certain directions, and we infer that this clearness and acuteness may be applied where they are of no use. The truth is, that animals are both more intelligent and less intelligent than we fancy. A dog, and even a horse, notices a good deal that we little suspect him of noticing, but at the same time a great deal which we think he sees is perfectly invisible to him. The following account of the behaviour of a cow gives a glimpse of the real nature of the animal : —

' These long-tailed cows,' say Messrs. Hue and Gabet, ' are so restive and difficult to milk, that, to keep them at all quiet, the herdsman has to give them a calf to lick meanwhile. But for this device, not a single drop of milk could be obtained from them. One day a Lama herdsman, who lived in the same house with ourselves, came, with a long dismal face, to announce that his cow had calved during the night, and that, unfortunately, the calf was dying. It died in the course of the day. The Lama forthwith skinned the poor beast, and stuffed it with hay. This proceeding surprised us at first, for the Lama had by no means the air of a man likely to give himself the luxury of a cabinet of natural history. When the operation was completed we found that the hay-calf had neither feet nor head ; whereupon it occurred to us that, after all, it was perhaps a pillow that the Lama contemplated. We were in error ; but the error was not dissipated till the next morning, when our herdsman went to milk his cow. Seeing him issue forth, the pail in one hand

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and the hay-calf under the other arm, the fancy occurred to us to follow him. His first proceeding was to put the hay-calf down before the cow. He then turned to milk the cow herself. The mamma at first opened enormous eyes at her beloved infant ; by degrees she stooped her head towards it, then smelt at it, sneezed three or four times, and at last proceeded to lick it with the most delightful tenderness. This spectacle grated against our sensibilities ; it seemed to us that he who first invented this parody upon one of the most touching incidents in nature must have been a man without a heart. A somewhat burlesque circumstance occurred one day to modify the indignation with which this treachery inspired us. By dint of caressing and licking her little calf, the tender parent one fine morning unripped it ; the hay issued from within, and the cow, manifesting not the slightest surprise nor agitation, proceeded tranquilly to devour the unexpected provender.'

The last touch entirely paints the brute. She has recognised her offspring by the smell chiefly, and never having heard of anatomy is not surprised when the internal organs are found to consist simply of hay. And why not eat the hay ? The absence of surprise at the discovery, the immediateness of the decision to eat the hay, are perfectly natural in a cow, and if they surprise us it is only because we do not fully realise the state of the bovine mind. If we reflect, however, we must perceive that a cow can be aware of no reason why calves should not be constructed internally of hay. On the other

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hand, the bovine mind cannot be wanting in its own kind of intelligence, for oxen know their masters, and when in harness are remarkable for a very accurate and delicate kind of obedience ; indeed the horse is light-headed and careless in comparison with them.

Animals, like the great majority of the human race, observe only what concerns them and see everything simply in the relation which it bears to themselves. In Gustave Dore's ' Juif Errant' a donkey is tasting a man's beard, under the impression that it may possibly be a sort of hay. Dore most probably had witnessed the incident ; I have witnessed it several times. Why should a man's beard not consist of hay? There are physiological reasons, but we cannot expect a donkey to be aware of them. We continually forget that brutes have not the advantage of obtaining accurate ideas by spoken or written language. We do not realise the immensity of their ignorance. That ignorance, in combination with perfect cerebral clearness (ignorance and mental clearness are quite compatible), and with inconceivable strong instincts, produces a creature whose mental states we can never accurately understand. None of us can imagine the feelings of a tiger when his jaws are bathed in blood and he tears the quivering flesh. The passion of the great flesh-eater is as completely unknown to civilised men, as the passion of the poet is to the tiger in the jungle. It is far more than merely a good appetite, it is an intense emotion. A quite faint and pale shadow of it still remains in men with an ardent enthusiasm for the chase, who feel

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a joy in slaughter, but this to the tiger's passion is as water to whisky. This impossibility of knowing the real sensations of animals — and the sensations are the life — stands like an inaccessible and immovable rock right in the pathway of our studies. The effort of dramatic power necessary to imagine the life of another person is very considerable, and few minds are capable of it, but it is much easier to imagine the sensations of a farmer than those of his horse. The main difficulty in conceiving the mental states of animals is, that the moment we think of them as human we are lost. Neither are they machines pushed by irresistible instincts. A human being as ignorant as a horfee would be an idiot, and act with an idiot's lack of sense and incapacity for sequence. But the horse is not an idiot, he has a mind at once quite clear and sane, and is very observant in his own way. Most domestic animals are as keenly alive to their own interests as a man of business. They can make bargains, and stick to them, and make you stick to them also. I have a little mare who used to require six men to catch her in the pasture, but I carried corn to her for a long time without trying to take her, leaving the corn on the ground. Next, I induced her to eat the corn whilst I held it, still leaving her free. Finally I persuaded her to follow me, and now she will come trotting half-a-mile at my whistle, leaping ditches, fording brooks, in the darkness and rain, or in impenetrable fog. She follows me like a dog to the stable, and I administer the corn there. But it is a bargain ; she knowingly sells her liberty for the corn. The experiment of reducing the reward having been tried to test her behaviour, she ceased to obey the whistle and resumed her former habits ; but the full and due quantity having been restored she yielded her liberty again without resistance, and since then she is not to be cheated. On the other hand, she is very ignorant of much that a man of equal shrewdness would easily have picked up by the use of language. In our estimates of animal character we always commit one of two mistakes, — either we conclude that the beasts have great knowledge because they seem so clever, or else we fancy that they must be stupid because we have ascertained that they are ignorant ; so that, on the one hand, we constantly see animals severely punished for not having known what they could only have learned through human language, and, on the other hand, we find men very frequently underrating the wonderful natural intelligence of the brute creation, and treating animals without the least consideration for their feelings, which are often highly sensitive.

Another obstacle to a right understanding of the brute nature is the common habit of sentimentalism, which attributes to some favourite races of animals some fine qualities, which, if they are to be discovered at all, can only be detected in most rare instances, and, even then, are striking rather from their rarity than their strength. A good example of what I mean is the popular belief concerning the affectionateness of horses. The plain truth is, that the horse is not an affectionate animal but that man wishes he were so, and supplies him with this charming quality from the resources of his own imagination. The horse may be made familiar; you may cultivate his intimate acquaintance, as acquaintance merely, but his affections are not for man, they are for his brute companions.*

It seems to me, that notwithstanding the insuperable difficulties which hinder us from a perfect comprehension of the brute nature in any of its forms, we may still, by careful observation and reflection, aided by a kindly sympathy and indulgence, arrive at notions about animal life not altogether without interest. Let us always try to bear in mind those great necessities which are irresistibly felt by animals as a consequence of their special organisation, and preserve ourselves from the error of approving or blaming them according to human standards. When a tiger eats a man, the act is not more blameable than the act of a man who opens and eats an oyster We have the most absurd prejudices on this subject, which have taken root in infancy and not been disturbed by maturer reflection afterwards. Wolves and falcons seem cruel because their prey is rather large, but the little insect-eating birds are our pets, and cats are morally esteemed for catching mice. A word may be said in passing about the morbid love which many people have for animals, and foolishly encourage as a virtue. Some people love their dogs in a manner not at all con-

• I have been told lately that Arab horses are capable of strong affection for their masters, which, if true, may have been the origin of tne popular belief.

ducive to the dogs' true happiness and welfare. I knew a lady and gentleman who loved their dog so much that he had a chair at the dinner-table, and slept at night (he was a large retriever) in the same bed with his master and mistress. I had the honour of sitting opposite to him at dinner, and was much edified by his well-bred manners. He ate soberly from a plate, like the rest of us. But it is not a kindness to pamper animals of any kind ; the true way to be kind to animals is to order their living in every way that they may be cheerful and healthy through their allotted span of life, and we ought not to hesitate about putting them to death when infirmities make existence a burden. So with reference to animals slaughtered for our use, there can be no moral hesitation if only the most merciful death is chosen. It is wrong to bleed calves to dealth slowly, as is done in England to have the veal white ; it is wrong to tear out the eyes of rabbits while yet living, as is done in some parts of France from a notion that the meat is better for it ; it is wrong to give geese a liver complaint in order to make Strasbourg pies; but a true gourmet will hesitate at no cruelty if it procures him a perceptible increase in the delicate delight of tasting. As to that great horrible question of vivisection, which men of science do really practise much more than is commonly suspected, the discoveries effected by it have prevented, they say, much suffering, but the doubt remains whether a merciful end can justify means so frightfully merciless. The young veterinary surgeons at Maisons-Alfort do actually learn to operate by practising on living horses, which are saved from the knacker for that purpose ; and the same science which inflicts tortures worse than those of the Inquisition prolongs the misery of the victims by the most solicitous care in the intervals between one operation and another. Finally, after from twenty to sixty operations, the animals die from sheer inability to endure any more torture ; and still the sky is bright over Maisons-Alfort, and the houses are pretty and fanciful, and the gardens sweetly luxuriant, and there are arbours for pleasant shade where the well-to-do messieurs and dames sit sipping their coffee and cognac. A pretty place in the summer, but the hell of horses, punished for no sin 1

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Chapter II. Dogs

THERE is a little skull amongst the bones I have collected for the study of anatomy, which any slightly scientific person would at once recognise as that of a dog. It is a beautiful little skull, finely developed, and one sees at a glance that the animal, when it was alive, must have possessed more than ordinary intelligence. The scientific lecturer would consider it rather valuable as an illustration of cranial structure in the higher animals ; he might compare it with the skull of a crocodile, and deduce conclusions as to the manifest superiority of the canine brain.

To me this beautiful little example of Divine construction may be a teacher of scientific truths, but it is also a great deal more than that. My memory clothes it with mobile muscles and skin, covered with fine, short hair, in patches of white and yellow. Where another sees only hollow sockets in which lurk perpetual shadows, I can see bright eyes wherein the sunshine played long ago, just as it plays in the topaz depths of some clear

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northern rivulet. I see the ears too, though the skull has none ; and the ears listen and the eyes gaze with an infinite love and longing.

She was the friend of my boyhood, reader, the companion of a thousand rambles, and when she died my boyhood was dead also and became part of the irrecoverable past. There is an indentation in the bone, due to an accident. How well I remember all about that accident ! How tenderly we nursed her, how glad we were when she got well again and followed me according to her wont ! I wonder how many miles we have travelled together, she and I, along the banks of our own stream and out on the purple moors !

Of course the reader cannot be expected to care very much about a poor little terrier that only loved its young master, as all dogs will, by reason of the instinct that is in them, and died more than eighteen years ago. I am willing to believe that millions of dogs have been as good as she was, and a great deal more valuable in the market, but no skull in the best natural history collections in Europe could tempt me to part with this. Every year makes the relic more precious, since every year certain recollections gradually fade, and this helps me to recover them. You may think that it is a questionable taste to keep so ghastly a reminder. It does not seem ghastly to me, but is only as the dried flower that we treasure in some sacred book. When I think by how much devoted affection this bony tenement was once inhabited, it seems to me -still a most fair and beautiful dwelling. The

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prevailing idea that reigned there was the image of me, her master. Shall I scorn this ivory cell in which my own picture had ever the place of honour ?

Many a man past the middle of life remembers with a quite peculiar and especial tenderness that one dog which was the dear companion of his boyhood. No other canine friend can ever be to us exactly what that one was ; and here let me venture to observe that the comparative shortness of the lives of dogs is the only imperfection in the relation between them and us. If they had lived to threescore years and ten, man and dog might have travelled through life together, but as it is we must either have a succession of affections, or else, when the first is buried in its early grave, live in a chill condition of doglessness. The certainty of early death is added to the possibility of accident. I had a dog of great gifts, exceptionally intelligent, who would obey a look where another needed an order, and of rare beauty both of colour and form. One evening in the twilight we went out together, and, as cruel fate would have it, I crossed a valley where there was a deep and rapid stream. Rapid and deep it was, yet not much wider than the Strid at Bolton, and there was a mill and a narrow rustic bridge. My poor dog lingered behind a few minutes in the deepening twilight and I called for him in vain. He had tried to leap across between the bridge and the mill, and was hurried to destruction along an irresistible current, between walls of pitiless stone on which he had no hold. I cannot think of that twilight even now without