1 62 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PLA Y 



by hunger, devour the weakest, and jackals will at 

 once assemble and tear to pieces a wounded member 

 of the pack. But I lately heard a curious instance 

 of the instinct to destroy the injured among the 

 larger cats. Some rough ground in Oudh was being 

 driven by beaters, when a cheetah appeared before 

 one of the guns and was badly wounded. Another 

 cheetah appeared immediately after, and came up to 

 the first, which it seemed to urge to follow it. 

 The wounded cheetah was unable to move, and 

 the second, on discovering this, sprang on it, caught 

 it by the throat, and killed it, and was shot as it 

 bounded away after this deliberate murder. Monkeys, 

 with some notable exceptions, are some degrees worse 

 than savage men in their treatment of the sick. 

 On the new Jumna Canal at Delhi, monkeys swarm 

 in the trees upon the banks, and treat their sick 

 comrades in true monkey-fashion. The colony by 

 the canal being overcrowded and, as a consequence, 

 unhealthy, did, and probably does still, suffer from 

 various unpleasant diseases. When one monkey is 

 so obviously unwell as to offend the feelings of the 

 rest, a few of the larger monkeys watch it, and 

 taking a favourable opportunity, knock it into the 

 canal. If it is not drowned at once, the sick monkey 

 is pitched in again after it regains the trees, and 

 either drowned, or forced to keep aloof from the 



