248 MIXED CAUSES OF 



in the case of many of them for relaxation on the one hand, 

 and pleasant excitement on the other. Sameness has a 

 similar depressing influence on them as on man, whether 

 that sameness be of scene, surroundings, air, or food. 



Young animals are as fond of play, and many mature 

 ones of sports, as the human infant or child and the human 

 sportsman are. And everything that interferes with this 

 requisite and natural play, sport, excitement, amusement, 

 novelty, or variety, is apt to pave the way for morbid mental 

 conditions. Dogs go in common to the same places, at the 

 same hours, undeterred by punishment, for their exercises 

 and games, according to Houzeau, who describes also the 

 recreations of the mother fox with her whelps, as including 

 the playing at c leap-frog,' or something analogous. Broderip 

 speaks of the evening amusements of rooks. Various pas- 

 times occur among other birds, and are not unknown among 

 fish. 



But many or most menagerie animals and drawing- 

 room pets have no means of enjoying themselves in their 

 own way with their own kind : there is no variation in their 

 manner of life from day to day ; and hence their morbidity, 

 both of mind and body. Love of freshness or change as of 

 companionship, exercise, excitement, freedom, play even in 

 many cases of fun, is intuitive or innate ; and it must be 

 gratified if health mental or bodily is to be maintained. 



Man's cruelty to, his neglect or injudicious treatment of, 

 subject animals operates on their mental character deleteri- 

 ously in a great variety of ways. He may be guilty of inten- 

 tional, deliberate, wanton ill-usage in the form of physical 

 punishment for instance, by blows on the head ; and these 

 blows may be of such violence, in so sensitive an animal 

 as the dog, that the most serious mental or bodily disorder 

 directly results. Much more frequently his neglect is unin- 

 tentional or accidental, the result of ignorance or thought- 

 lessness; yet it reacts mischievously on the natural or morbid 

 sensitiveness of such animals as the highty-bred horse and 

 dog. This species of neglect includes the inconsiderate 

 subjecting of domestic animals to all classes of preventible 

 causes of mental defect and disorder. 



