CHAPTER VII 



FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS 



The title justified — Position of friendship in the scale of animal 

 qualities — Friendships between horses — A pet wolf — Peter 

 the fox — Friendships among birds — A jackdaw and a small 

 boy — Stories of teal — Birds caring for injured companions 

 — The helping instinct — Partridge and pony — Strange case 

 of a swan and a trout. 



SOME lordly-minded person has said that it is 

 a misuse or an abuse of the word to describe 

 as friendship the distinct preference for each 

 other's company and habitual consorting together of 

 two individuals among the lower animals; because 

 — this wise man continues — being lower animals, 

 they cannot rise to the height of that union between 

 two minds, or souls, common among men. Where 

 then does the capacity for this union begin ? for who 

 will venture to say that the two-legged upright or 

 man-shaped mammalian of Tierra del Fuego or the 

 Andaman Islands or of the Aruwimi forest is capable 

 of a feeling beyond the power of elephants, dogs, 

 seals, apes, and in fact of all other vertebrates — 

 beasts, birds, reptiles, and fishes ? There is no broad 

 line of demarcation between our noble selves and 

 these our poor relations — even the wearers of feathers 

 and scales. We have had to learn, not without 



reluctance and a secret bitterness, that even our 

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