INTOXICATION. 87 



b. As a bribe or reward to get them to do extra 



work ; or : 



r. For the purposes of capture ; or 

 d. For various nefarious purposes, including especially 

 theft and burglary perhaps even murder. 



In whatever way or form, or for whatever purpose, the 

 alcoholic liquor is originally administered by the animal 

 to itself or by man a fondness for alcoholic stimulants or 

 intoxicants is either gradually or at once developed. 



In the case of rats broaching casks of wine, spirits, or 

 beer, there is probably, at first at least, no special search 

 or craving for alcoholic fluids. What is urgently wanted 

 is fluid of any kind, to quench consuming thirst, and any 

 accessible fluid, whatever its nature, is at once attacked. 

 They find out for themselves, however, that certain fluids 

 are unpleasant and deadly, while others are pleasant and 

 not necessarily fatal in their effects. And there is every 

 reason to suppose that rats, like so many other animals, 

 having once tasted alcoholic fluids, at once approve of them, 

 and acquire a decided taste for them, which, taste developes 

 into a craving in proportion to the frequency with which it 

 is gratified. Monkeys and apes also find out for themselves, 

 in their propensity to taste everything that man drinks, 

 what they too consider the agreeable qualities of alcohol. 



It is apparently becoming more and more a practice for 

 veterinarians to administer alcohol to the lower animals in 

 various conditions of disease, just as it is for physicians to 

 give it to children and women in both cases, it is to be 

 feared, without due appreciation of, or reflection upon, the 

 possible results. Thus a Natal lion, that ultimately died of 

 fever in the Zoological Gardens of Dublin in 1864, was 

 treated with 'large draughts' of whiskey-punch. C 0n the 

 Sunday before he died, the people from Dublin came out in 

 large crowds to see him take his punch, which they said he 

 did just like a Christian.' 



Among the medicinal or therapeutic applications of 

 alcohol among the lower animals may be included its use 

 by man as a stimulant of energy or activity, as a means of 

 developing mettle or spirit, courage or combativeness, in 



