22 INSANITY IN THE LOWER ANIMALS. 



In certain remote parts of Scotland, even at the present 

 day, where primitive ideas or superstitions have not quite 

 died out, it is evident that some forms of mental defect, dis- 

 order or eccentricity are attributed to domestic animals 

 having been crossed by imaginary water kelpies, water bulls, 

 or water horses. Thus the ' Nether Lochaber ' correspondent 

 of the ' Inverness Courier ' refers to this superstition so lately 

 as 1874. 1 He remarks that horses, 'much given to shying 

 in the daytime without apparent cause, and a fondness when 

 out at grass of wading through rivers and streams, and stand- 

 ing in listless, meditative mood by the margin of pools, may 

 be confidently set down as descendants, in a nearer or re- 

 moter degree, of some demon-steed progenitor.' Foals which 

 result from a union of the fabulous water horse and our own 

 domestic animal, the common horse, are said to be known by 

 their flashing eyes and fiery spirit. e Even to this day .... 

 if a young heifer gives much trouble in the milking, and is 

 recalcitrant and reluctant to have her head bound up in her 

 stall .... it may be gravely suspected that she has more or 

 less of the old water-bull blood in her veins.' 



Nowadays, however, the equally great mistake is com- 

 mitted of confounding all the varied forms of animal insanity 

 with rabies, distemper, and a number of other bodily diseases 

 supposed to be peculiar to the lower animals, diseases that are 

 regarded as contagious, and that are frequently incurable, 

 while they are usually dangerous to man and to other ani- 

 mals. Though madness is admittedly more or less common 

 in such animals as the dog, horse, ox, elephant, cat and 

 sheep, though the affected animals are popularly described 

 as infuriated, enraged, maddened, frenzied, crazed, cranky, 

 ferocious or vicious, and though we quite appropriately use 

 such expressions applied to the lower animals as loss of wits, 

 of senses, or of head, there is a singular reluctance to believe 

 or admit that the mental phenomena described by such 

 phrases are really the same in kind in man and other animals, 

 and that, if it is proper to apply the term insanity to the one 

 class of cases, it is incumbent on us to apply it equally to 

 the other. 



1 In the number of that newspaper for November 5, 1874. 



