39 2 Animal Life and Intelligence. 



are very apt, I imagine, to over-estimate the intensity of 

 their feelings. Among human-folk it is not he who halloas 

 loudest that is necessarily most hurt. And it is only 

 through the expression of their feelings in cries and gestures 

 that we can conjecture the feelings of animals. There are 

 grounds for supposing fc that savages are far less keenly 

 sensitive than civilized people. And we have some reason 

 for believing and hoping that our dumb companions are 

 less sensitive to pain than we are. Mr. G. A. Eowell, for 

 example, in his " Essay on the Beneficent Distribution of 

 the Sense of Pain," tells us that "a post-horse came down 

 on the road with such violence that the skin and sinews of 

 both the fore fetlock joints were so cut that, on his getting 

 up again, the bones came through the skin, and the two 

 feet turned up at the back of the legs, -the horse walking 

 upon the ends of its leg-bones. The horse was put into a 

 field close by, and the next morning it was found quietly 

 feeding about the field, with the feet and skin forced some 

 distance up the leg-bones, and, where it had been walking 

 about, the holes made in the ground by the leg-bones were 

 three or four inches deep." Mr. Lament gives a somewhat 

 similar observation in the case of the reindeer. " On one 

 occasion," he says, " we broke one of the fore feet of an 

 old fat stag from an unseen ambush ; his companions ran 

 away, and the wounded deer, after making some attempts 

 to follow them, which the softness of the ground and his 

 own corpulence prevented him doing, looked about him a 

 little, and then, seeing nothing, actually began to graze on 

 his three remaining legs, as if nothing had happened of 

 sufficient consequence to keep him from his dinner." 

 Colonel Sir Charles W. Wilson, in his work "From Korti 

 to Khartoum," gives similar instances with regard to 

 camels. " The most curious thing," he says,* " was that 

 they showed no alarm, and did not seem to mind being hit. 

 One heard a heavy thud, and, looking round, saw a stream 

 of blood oozing out of the wound, but the camel went on 

 chewing his cud as if nothing at all had happened, not 



* Page 70. 





