Th e Dying Hua naco. 325 



together with the oppressive sensations caused by 

 the ponderous native saddle, or recado, with its 

 huge surcinglo of raw hide drawn up so tightly as 

 to hinder free respiration. The suffering animal 

 remembers how at the last relief invariably came, 

 when the twelve or fifteen hours' torture were over, 

 the toil and the want, and when the great iron 

 bridle and ponderous gear were removed, and he had 

 freedom and food and drink and rest. At the gate 

 or at the door of his master's house, the sudden 

 relief had always come to him ; and there does 

 he sometimes go in his sickness, his fear over- 

 mastered by his suffering, to find it again. 



Discussing this question with a friend, who has 

 a subtle mind and great experience of the horse in 

 semi-barbarous countries, and of many other ani- 

 mals, wild and tame, in many regions of the globe, 

 he put forward a different explanation of the action 

 of the horse in coming home to die, which he thinks 

 simpler and more probable than mine. It is, that 

 a dying or ailing animal instinctively withdraws 

 itself from its fellows an action of self-preserva- 

 tion in the individual in opposition to the well- 

 known instincts of the healthy animals, which 

 impels the whole herd to turn upon and persecute 

 the sickly member, thus destroying its chances of 

 recovery. The desire of the suffering animal is not 

 only to leave its fellows, but to get to some solitary 

 place where they cannot follow, or would never find 

 him, to escape at once from a great and pressing 

 danger. But on the pastoral pampas, where horses 

 are so numerous that on that level, treeless area they 

 are always and everywhere visible, no hiding-place 



