SUICIDE. 147 



and started for the woods. The other dogs formed into a 

 regular procession, and in single file followed the body.' 

 They dug a grave, deposited the body in it, covered it with 

 earth, then united in a chorus of howls, and dispersed. 



Certain birds, such as the wren, we are told, sing re- 

 quiems or dirges over the graves of their fellows. In one 

 case, narrated in c Chambers's Journal,' twenty or thirty of 

 these birds took part, the dirge being a mournful twitter 

 quite different from their usual joyous song. The fact is 

 represented as being so well established, though the inci- 

 dent itself is of rare occurrence, that such a performance is 

 popularly known as c The Wren's Kequiem.' 



Instead of care of the dead, many animals show a stolid 

 and marked indifference, and this may be of such a character 

 as to lead to their offering every indignity to the dead, or to 

 their preying upon them. Such indifference has been noted 

 in bees by Lubbock ; in ruminants and solipeds by Houzeau. 



Many animals, again, commit errors of a kind serious 

 frequently to themselves concerning the nature of immo- 

 bility : they confound sleep with death, or simulated death 

 with that which is real. Desiring to prey on certain animals, 

 they incautiously allow the wish to be father to the thought 

 that these animals are dead, when they merely appear to be 

 so ; they jump too hastily at desirable but inaccurate and 

 unfortunate conclusions. 



It is obvious that many animals associate the idea of 

 movement with that of life, and the converse. Hence they 

 draw the inference frequently erroneous that absence of 

 movement indicates absence of life. This, however, is a 

 conclusion at which man himself frequently arrives, under 

 similar circumstances, as regards brother man, as well as 

 in reference to other animals his ' game.' How often 

 does he find it necessary to call in the physician to deter- 

 mine whether or not a given life is extinct? And how 

 frequently for instance, in cases of drowning and trance 

 is even the physician apt to be deceived by rigid immo- 

 bility ? 



In the dog, in particular, there is a frequent non- 

 realisation of the nature of death non-recognition of the 



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