HOW ANIMALS TELL ONE ANOTHER 



Almost every case of cattle-poisoning in Great Britain occurs 

 when young calves, foals, or lambs are turned loose in the 

 fields without any mature older head amongst them. Some- 

 times valuable stable-bred animals are lost, especially by 

 eating yew-leaves, but there are exceedingly few instances of 

 full-grown cattle being caught in such foolishness. When 

 cattle, horses, or sheep are turned loose in a new country, 

 plenty of cases do occur, and it is possible that they might 

 make mistakes with unknown foreign plants which had 

 escaped into their pastures here. 



But almost every case of poisoning, even of cattle, shows 

 that it is young cattle who foolishly eat foxgloves, dropwort, 

 buttercup, etc., and occasionally die thereby. 



Wild animals, who are of course brought up by their 

 mothers, never seem to be poisoned. They probably recog- 

 nize the dangerous plant by colour, smell, or taste. As a 

 matter of fact, many are rendered conspicuous by some lurid 

 sort of colour, such as bright red or purple. There is a 

 general garishness of appearance about many of them. 

 Aconite, Foxglove, Herb Paris, Henbane, and Nightshades 

 all show this peculiar appearance. In Java it is said that 

 the natives keep away wild pigs by planting hedges of certain 

 species with purplish-red leaves around their plantations. 



Perhaps the most interesting point of all is that it seems 

 to be quite justifiable to conclude that animals do, somehow, 

 manage to tell their offspring and each other what they 

 should and should not eat. 



Youth, with its tendency to rash experiment, is thus kept 

 in check by the mature experience of age. 



But it must be admitted that it is exceedingly difficult to 

 arrive at the facts in any particular case. 



I shall be rash enough to give an opinion as to the actual 



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