be tempted to follow the troop. In this case their conduct is not much
worse than that of the North American Indians, who leave their feeble
comrades to perish on the plains; or the Fijians, who, when their
parents get old, or fall ill, bury them alive. (12. Sir J. Lubbock,
Prehistoric Times, 2nd ed., p. 446.)
Many animals, however, certainly sympathise with each other s distress
or danger. This is the case even with birds. Captain Stansbury (13. As
quoted by Mr. L.H. Morgan, The American Beaver, 1868, p. 272. Capt.
Stansbury also gives an interesting account of the manner in which a
very young pelican, carried away by a strong stream, was guided and
encouraged in its attempts to reach the shore by half a dozen old
birds.) found on a salt lake in Utah an old and completely blind
pelican, which was very fat, and must have been well fed for a long
time by his companions. Mr. Blyth, as he informs me, saw Indian crows
feeding two or three of their companions which were blind; and I have
heard of an analogous case with the domestic cock. We may, if we
choose, call these actions instinctive; but such cases are much too
rare for the development of any special instinct. (14. As Mr. Bain
states, effective aid to a sufferer springs from sympathy proper:
Mental and Moral Science, 1868, p. 245.) I have myself seen a dog,
who never passed a cat who lay sick in a basket, and was a great friend
of his, without giving her a few licks with his tongue, the surest sign
of kind feeling in a dog.
It must be called sympathy that leads a courageous dog to fly at any
one who strikes his master, as he certainly will. I saw a person
pretending to beat a lady, who had a very timid little dog on her lap,
and the trial had never been made before; the little creature instantly
jumped away, but after the pretended beating was over, it was really
pathetic to see how perseveringly he tried to lick his mistress s face,
and comfort her. Brehm (15. Thierleben, B. i. s. 85.) states that
when a baboon in confinement was pursued to be punished, the others
tried to protect him. It must have been sympathy in the cases above
given which led the baboons and Cercopitheci to defend their young
comrades from the dogs and the eagle. I will give only one other
instance of sympathetic and heroic conduct, in the case of a little
American monkey. Several years ago a keeper at the Zoological Gardens
shewed me some deep and scarcely healed wounds on the nape of his own
neck, inflicted on him, whilst kneeling on the floor, by a fierce
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