1875.] Animal Depravity. 427 
The existence of hybrids shows a departure from what 
nature should enjoin. Such beings have been produced 
respectively, not alone between the horse and the ass, but 
between the horse and the quagga, the horse and the zebra, 
the ass and the zebra, the lion and the tiger, the hare and 
the rabbit (leporides), and between a great variety of birds 
of the poultry, pheasant, grouse, duck, and finch groups. 
To the dismay and indignation of certain theorists some of 
these hybrids are capable of reproduction. 
It has been objected that these instances occur only 
through human intervention. This is by no means the fact. 
Hybrids between distinct species of grouse have been met 
with in a wild state. 
Instances of hybridism are likewise said to have occurred 
between animals much more widely remote in their respec- 
tive natures. Such cases are doubtful, and are certainly 
not essential to our argument. But intercourse not un- 
frequently takes place between animals of different species 
where no offspring has been positively proved to result. 
Many more instances of brute frailty might be given 
were it needful or desirable. 
It has been asserted that ‘‘ mere brutes’ never commit 
suicide. This is a wanton, it might be said an impudent, 
assumption. If a negro, sold into slavery, refuses food 
and starves himself to death, as sometimes happened in the 
palmy days of the ‘‘ black ivory-trade,” men say that he 
has committed suicide rather than live in bondage; but if 
an animal, bird, or reptile, taken away from its native 
haunts and shut up in a cage, persistently refuses food and 
dies in consequence, why should not the same name be 
applied to conduct precisely similar? Yet cases of this 
kind, in which the love of liberty and independence asserts 
itself in flat defiance of the strongest of all instin¢ts are by 
no meansrare. ‘There is great difficulty in inducing some 
animals to eat in captivity, even if supplied with the very 
kind of food which they select when at large. As an 
example, we may mention the common viper, which gener- 
ally starves itself to death in captivity, regardless of the 
offer of the choicest mice. But there are many instances 
among domestic animals, proving that life-weariness and 
the determination to end miseries in a sudden manner are 
not confined to the human race. 
** Suicide by a Dog.—A day or two since a fine dog, belong- 
ing to Mr. George Hone, of Frindsbury, near Rochester, 
committed a deliberate act of suicide by drowning in the 
Medway, at Upnor, Chatham. The dog had been suspected 
