208 MY SOMALI BOOK 



of power and victory in running away. . . . Hoof and 

 wing seem to laugh at danger behind and to rejoice in 

 this splendid power and training." This, remember, 

 is the view of an outdoor naturalist who is not a 

 hunter and who need not be suspected of a wish to 

 father the thought. 



So the oft-derided view that the fox enjoys being 

 hunted, at any rate until he is at the last gasp, may 

 have something in it after all ! I have little doubt of 

 it. Have you ever ridden after a blackbuck and seen 

 others come and deliberately join j^ou in the race ? 

 making, too, no attempt to increase their short distance 

 ahead of you, though if they chose they could travel 

 three yards to your pony's two ? I have. And 

 watch a tame gazelle suddenty startled, for a moment 

 the life almost frightened out of it ; another moment 

 and it has forgotten all about it and is nibbling un- 

 concernedly at 3^our newspaper or putting its fore-feet 

 on the tea-table ; thus an old friend of mine, an 

 Arabian gazelle. And jou may see much the same 

 thing in the wild creatures. 



As Wallace remarks again, " The normal state of 

 happiness (among animals) is not alloj^ed, as it is with 

 us, b}' long periods — whole lives often — of poverty or 

 ill health, and of the unsatisfied longing for pleasures 

 which others enjoy but to which we cannot attain. 

 Illness, and what answers to poverty in animals — 

 continued hunger — are quickly followed by unantici- 

 pated and almost painless extinction." 



Lingering suffering rarely occurs except m the case 

 of animals which, injured by man or beast, escape 

 with festering wounds. In most instances, fortunately, 



