ANIMALS IN SICKNESS 



' Why let the stricken deer go weep, 

 The hart ungalled play.' HAMLET. 



THE circumstances which attend the illness and 

 death of wild animals are perhaps less well known 

 than any other part of their history. Yet when 

 we consider that animal life, though in some cases 

 of great duration, is naturally brief, and liable to an 

 infinite number of accidents without remedy and 

 sudden dangers unforeseen, the subject of the 

 last days of the nobler sort of beasts has a certain 

 pathetic interest. No doubt, all animals, from the 

 healthy and natural lives they lead, have strange 

 powers of self cure in case of accident. Those 

 whose profession it is to prepare the skeletons of 

 wild beasts, large and small, for museums and 

 collections, speak with surprise of the number of 

 injuries and fractures which the bones exhibit, but 

 which have set themselves in a rough but effective 

 fashion. But . the ' chapter of accidents ' in animal 



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