84 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PL A Y 



between the individuals, that the loss of one is easily 

 replaced. It leaves no gap in the daily life as the 

 loss of a human being may in that of a domestic 

 animal. But Lord Lovat has given a sufficient 

 number of instances of the grief felt by wild deer at 

 the death or wounding of their companions to supple- 

 ment the lesson of Sir E. Landseer's picture entitled 

 'Highland Nurses/ in which the hinds are watching 

 by a wounded stag. Birds, which since the days 

 when .^Eschylus described the hurried and anxious 

 flight of the vultures robbed of their young, have 

 always shown the utmost distress and grief at the 

 loss of their nestlings, seem seldom affected to sorrow 

 by any other circumstance, though Miss Benson, in her 

 book, Subject to Vanity, has lately given an account 

 of the ' inhuman ' indifference of a hen Budjerigar 

 parrakeet when its mate was ill, and of the obvious 

 dejection which this indifference caused in the sick 

 bird. But it is now doubted whether ' love birds ' 

 die of grief after the loss of their mate, though the 

 fact that one usually dies very soon, often only a 

 few hours after the other, is not disputed. But 

 they are delicate birds, and the same unsuitable food 

 or sudden draught which kills one usually affects 

 the other. They are probably victims, not of sorrow, 

 but of errors in ' domestic hygiene/ 



