SUICIDE. 137 



contested with it the possession of a bit of bun (' Chambers's 

 Journal ') . 



And it would be strange, indeed, if animals did not also 

 commit self-murder. 



No doubt there are numerous alleged cases of suicide 

 among the lower animals, in which there is no proof positive 

 of the intention to destroy their own lives. But how fre- 

 quently is this the case also in man ? Notwithstanding the 

 absence of proof, the presumption is strong in many at least 

 of such cases that suicide proper was committed. Thus it is 

 difficult to regard such a leap as that of a buck elk over a 

 precipice in Ceylon as both figured and described by Sir 

 Samuel Baker otherwise than as the deliberate suicide of 

 an animal at bay, preferring one sort of death to another. 

 He looked before he leaped, and he leaped to certain death. 

 He was, we are told, found ' dead, as he had broken most of 

 his bones.' 



The dog, too, and even the cat, are not unfrequently 

 'found dead' usually drowned under circumstances that 

 warrant the conclusion that the death was the result of sui- 

 cide. Thus a cat was found drowned in a pond immediately 

 after the death of a master to whom it had been much 

 attached. It had left the house on his illness a fortnight 

 previously, refusing to enter it again ( c Animal World '). The 

 inference was that grief had led to deliberate self-destruction ; 

 but the verdict of accidental drowning is, of course, equally 

 permissible. 



Cases are constantly occurring, again, of the sudden and 

 permanent disappearance from home so that they are never 

 tracked or traced and never again seen or heard of in which 

 the supposition of suicide is not only permissible, but its oc- 

 currence is probable, though not provable. Such disappear- 

 ances are apt to happen, for instance, in old pet dogs that 

 have been supplanted by younger rivals in the affections and 

 attentions of their masters and mistresses ; and it may be 

 added that, in many of these cases, the morbidly sensi- 

 tive and imaginative animal merely believes itself to be 

 supplanted, to have lost the esteem of its human patrons, 

 their regard being really unabated towards their former 



