Mind in Animals. 395 



and recall the hundreds that we know and have read about, 

 is it possible to believe that such love can perish ? We appre- 

 hend not. Unselfish love as this, which survives ingrati- 

 tude and ill-treatment, belongs to the spirit and not to the 

 body, and all beings capable of feeling such love must pos- 

 sess immortal spirits. All may not have an opportunity of 

 manifesting it, but all possess the capacity and would, were 

 the conditions favorable, manifest it openly. 



Few animals, as may easily be imagined, manifest Con- 

 jugal Love. Most species have no particular mates, but 

 merely meet by chance, and seemingly never trouble them- 

 selves about each other again. No real conjugal love, there- 

 fore, can exist, and it is rather curious that in such animals 

 a durable friendship is frequently formed between two indi- 

 viduals of the same sex. But when we come to polygamous 

 animals, such as the stag among mammals and the domestic 

 poultry among birds, we meet with a decided advance towards 

 conjugal love, although as in the case of polygamous man, 

 that love must necessarily be of an inferior character. There 

 is seen, at all events, a sense of appropriation on either side. 

 Take the example of the barn-yard fowl, as has already been 

 mentioned in that part of the chapter which deals with 

 jealousy, where it is shown that the proprietor of the harem 

 resents any attempt on the part of another male to infringe 

 on his privileges. 



This brings us to the consideration of birds, where the 

 many are mated for the nesting-season, but subsequently do 

 not seem to care more for each other than they do for their 

 broods of children. If one of the pair be killed at the nest- 

 ing-time the survivor, after a brief lamentation, consoles itself 

 in a few hours or days with another partner, for there really 

 appears to be a supply of spare partners of both sexes always 

 at hand. And now we come to those creatures which are 

 mated for life, and often we find among them a conjugal love 

 as strong and as sincere as among mongamous mankind. 

 Prominent among them are the eagle, the raven and the 



