FROM THE " SPECTATORS 219 



HAVE ANIMALS A FOREKNOW- 

 LEDGE OF DEATH? 



, 1892.] 



IN a recent Spectator there is a quotation 

 from Pierre Loti to the effect that " animals 

 not only fear death, but fear it the more 

 because they are aware that they have no 

 future." Pierre Loti is a brilliant novelist, 

 but I am not aware that he is a scientific 

 naturalist, and I trust his idea is a mere 

 chimera. Loti would take from the brutes 

 the one privilege for which men may envy 

 them, and endows them with a knowledge of 

 the aftertime that we have only by revelation. 

 However, two common-sense naturalists have 

 published their belief that the lower animals 

 have a foreknowledge of death, and one of 

 them goes so far as to give an account of an 

 old horse committing suicide. He says the 

 animal frequently suffered from some internal 

 disease, and that it deliberately walked into 

 a pond, and, putting its nostrils under water, 

 stood thus till it dropped dead from suffoca- 

 tion. The incident, I think, is easily explained. 



