SICK HORSES SEEKING HUMAN AID. 239 



chronicled in works of travel. Colonel Parker Gilmore 

 for instance mentions the case of a bay horse of his 

 that had fallen sick, and was rapidly growing worse : 



" I cannot (he says) go out of doors without his following me 

 about. Neither sticks nor shouts would keep him from me. 

 This is a curious characteristic of the African horse, and one 

 which I have often noticed before. Let them but get sick, 

 and by a sublime instinct they seek man's assistance to aid 

 them in their infirmity." 



This practice of sick or dying horses coming home 

 to their master's house or camp, was also noticed on 

 the South American pampas by Mr. Hudson, who 

 states that on two occasions he has been a witness 

 to an ailing horse coming home to die. These were 

 half- wild horses 



"that live out in the open and have to be captured with a 

 lasso when their services are required. I retain a vivid 

 recollection (says Mr. Hudson) of the first occasion of witness- 

 ing an action of this kind in the horse, though I was only 

 a boy at the time. On going out one evening I saw one 

 of the horses standing unsaddled and unbridled, leaning his 

 head over the gate ; and going to the spot I stroked his nose, 

 and turning to an old native I asked him what could be the 

 meaning of such a thing. ' 1 think he is going to die,' he 

 answered. 'Horses often come home to die' and next 

 morning the poor beast was found lying dead not twenty 

 yards from the gate." f 



Mr. Hudson says he thinks that as at the gate the 

 horse is always unsaddled and released from his 

 fatigues when . in health, he comes again in sickness 



* A Ride through Hostile Africa, by Colonel Parker Gilmore, pp. 

 302-3. 



f The Naturalist in La Plata, by W. H. Hudson, C.M.Z.S., 

 1892, p. 324. 



