SUICIDE. 143 



leaves to its young, eager, impatient, agile offspring the 

 pursuit of the hare, with all the involved doublings and 

 windings, and the exhaustion of following them up ; while it 

 waits patiently itself, with the sagacity begotten of expe- 

 rience, at the points where the game is likely, in the course 

 of pursuit, to cross its path or ambuscade. 



Sheep-dogs, watch-dogs, and other dogs useful to man 

 become sensible of their physical weakness in age, of their 

 incapacity for the discharge of duty, of their uselessness to 

 themselves or others, of their burdensomeness. 



The old cat enters into partnership with a younger mouser 

 the teacher directing the pupil, and both sharing the pro- 

 ceeds. The horse, too, has a sense of loss of strength, wind, 

 fleetness, of the decadence of its faculties, mental and 

 bodily, with age ; and hence it ceases its former rivalry in 

 the race, or endeavours to substitute unfair trickery for fair 

 competition. 



Many wild animals become aware of their inability to 

 defend themselves or to escape from danger ; they see and 

 feel on every hand their increasing and serious helplessness ; 

 they know they are ever at the mercy of the young and 

 strong. 



Various animals show in various ways that they recog- 

 nise, both in themselves and others, the approach of death ; 

 they feel and know themselves to be dying, or they appre- 

 ciate the indications of hastening dissolution in their fellows 

 or in animals of other species and genera. A sense of the 

 imminence of death leads them to make timely and proper 

 provision for its incidence. One of the commonest of these 

 preparations is the voluntary seclusion or isolation of dying 

 animals. They retire to die, frequently having set apart 

 special selected localities in which to die, and in some cases 

 it may be to be buried. It is, indeed, a matter of general 

 belief, founded upon fact, that ' the wounded beast seeks the 

 thickest covert, where it can die undisturbed,' alone, un- 

 noticed. In aquaria shrimps and prawns withdraw under 

 stones to die. The poet Cowper illustrates this familiar 

 tendency of wounded or sick animals to retire to die in the 

 following lines, applied to himself, taken from ' The Task/ 



