ANIMAL ' MA TERIA ME DIG A ' 171 



the elephant, and this is applied upon the most 

 trivial, as well as upon the most serious, occasions. 

 ... I have seen them when in a tank plaster up 

 a bullet wound with mud taken from the bottom ' 



In Europe the pig is credited with the discovery 

 of the use of the mud bath, and of the healing virtue 

 of the waters of Bath itself, unless the story of the 

 cleansing of Prince Bladud by the use of the water 

 which cured the skins of his swine is a baseless fable. 

 There is indirect evidence of the success of the 

 different forms of treatment used by animals to 

 keep their skins in health, in the disaster which 

 sometimes overtakes those which neglect them. In 

 the last few years great numbers of foxes, from South 

 Berkshire to the Badminton country, have died of 

 virulent mange. The disease was said to have been 

 introduced by some foreign foxes which were turned 

 down near Aldershot. The earths became tainted, 

 and the infected foxes seemed quite unable to shake 

 off the disease, or to discover any natural remedy 

 to cure it. Birds, such as rooks and ducks, which 

 live in companies, soon stamp out sporadic disease 

 by killing the sufferers ; but in great epidemics, such 

 as the grouse disease or the plague which destroyed 

 the reindeer of Northern Russia, birds and animals 

 alike seem helpless, and die passively. An excep- 

 tion must be made in the case of those grouse on 



