318 The Naturalist in La Plata. 



that mysterious, passionless tragedy of nature I 

 refer to J. M. Swan, the painter of the "Prodigal 

 Son" and the "Lioness Defending her Cubs." 



To his account of the animal's dying place and 

 instinct, Darwin adds : " I do not at all understand 

 the reason of this, but I may observe that the 

 wounded huanacos at the Santa Cruz invariably 

 walked towards the river.'* 



It would, no doubt, be rash to affirm of any 

 instinct that it is absolutely unique; but, putting 

 aside some doubtful reports about a custom of the 

 Asiatic elephant, which may have originated in 

 the account of Sindbad the Sailor's discovery of 

 an elephant's burial place, we have no knowledge 

 of an instinct similar to that of the huanaco in any 

 other animal. So far as we know, it stands alone 

 and apart, with nothing in the actions of other 

 species leading up, or suggesting any family like- 

 ness to it. But what chiefly attracts the mind to 

 it is its strangeness. It looks, in fact, less like an 

 instinct of one of the inferior creatures than the 

 superstitious observance of human beings, who 

 have knowledge of death, and believe in a continued 

 existence after dissolution ; of a tribe that in past 

 times had conceived the idea that the liberated 

 spirit is only able to find its way to its future abode 

 by starting at death from the ancient dying-place 

 of the tribe or family, and thence moving westward, 

 or skyward, or underground, over the well-worn 

 immemorial track, invisible to material eyes. 



But, although alone among animal instincts in its 

 strange and useless purpose for it is as absolutely 

 useless to the species or race as to the dying individual 



