32a The Naturalhst in La Plata. 
pampas—I have on two occasions witnessed it my- 
self—for a riding-horse to come home, or to the 
gate of his owner’s house, to die. Jam speaking of 
riding-horses that are never doctored, nor treated 
mercifully ; that look on their master as an enemy 
rather than a friend; horses that live out in the 
open, and have to be hunted to the corral or enclo- 
sure, or roughly captured with a lasso as they run, 
when their services are required. I retain avery vivid 
recollection of the first occasion of witnessing an 
action of this kind in a horse, although I was only a 
boy at the time. On going out one summer evening 
I saw one of the horses of the establishment stand- 
ing unsaddled and unbridled leaning his head over 
the gate. Going to the spot, I stroked his nose, and 
then, turning to an old native who happened to be 
near, asked him what could be the meaning of such 
athing. ‘I think he is going to die,” he answered ; 
“horses often come to the house to die.” And next 
morning the poor beast was found lying dead not 
twenty yards from the gate; although he had not 
appeared ill when | stroked his nose on the previous 
evening; but when I saw him lying there dead, and 
remembered the old native’s words, it seemed to 
me as marvellous and inexplicable that a horse 
should act in that way, as if some wild creature—a 
rhea, a fawn, or dolichotes—had come to exbale his 
last breath at the gates of his enemy and constant 
persecutor, man. 
I now believe that the sensations of sickness and 
approaching death in the riding-horse of the pam- 
pas resemble or simulate the pains, so often expe- 
rienced, of hunger, thirst and fatigue combined, 
