A TALE OF HORSE TAILS 43 



you may take from me as true and is very 

 interesting, as showing that ** horse sense " 

 is perhaps more rational than you may have 

 been indined to credit it with being. 



In a district of Australia, a lot of thorough- 

 bred horses were as usual out on the plains 

 doing for themselves when a perfect plague 

 of flies came down upon them, and worried 

 the horses, as they did the men looking on, 

 by landing all over them. The flies proved 

 particularly annoying by the persistency with 

 which they kept crowding round the eyes of 

 the horses. But the horses soon formed a 

 plan of campaign to defend their eyes. They 

 lined up in single file, the first horse looking 

 north while the next looked south, and so on 

 alternately, so that each horse's head had his 

 next-door neighbour's tail to flick the flies off 

 his head and eyes. This is a perfect fact, and 

 not a fairy-tale. They stood in this position 

 for hours, and, what is more, it was noticed that 

 if one horse ceased to use his tail as a " fly- 

 flicker " for a moment, he was at once called 

 to order by a bite from his neglected mate, 



