PL A G UE-STR UCK ANIMALS 1 1 9 



one instance do we hear of an increase in their numbers, 

 such as might naturally be expected to follow the 

 destruction of human life. After a plague epidemic in 

 France in 1503, the house-dogs became wild, and later, 

 communal hunts were organized to rid the country of 

 these new beasts of prey, and of the wolves, which 

 appeared in great packs. 



It is not known whether the animals of Florence, 

 like those of Bombay, were really suffering from plague. 

 But there is good reason to believe that their deaths 

 were connected by something more than coincidence of 

 time with the plague epidemic. What the old physicians 

 called ' general morbific conditions ' that change of 

 atmosphere and temperature which seems to summon 

 pestilence full-grown from the very ground in certain 

 parts of the East apparently prepared animal constitu- 

 tions to receive the human disease. A month before 

 the cholera became rife in Hamburg, sixty per cent, of 

 Carl Hagenbeck's animals suffered from choleraic 

 symptoms ; and he diagnosed the disease, checked it 

 by boiling the water, and notified the authorities of 

 what had happened. The curious exactness with which 

 Homer noted that in the plague before Troy, mules 

 and dogs were attacked before the soldiers, has often 

 been quoted as internal evidence of the truth of the 

 ' Iliad/ Influenza, which was very fatal among animals, 

 sometimes attacked them before it was felt by men, as 



