306 SENSITIVENESS. 



themselves, their nests, or their eggs, in incubating birds, is 

 resented as a serious molestation, and may lead to such 

 results as cannibalism of the eggs or young. 



The epidemicity of emotion is illustrated by many forms 

 of panic, elsewhere mentioned in this volume. In a flock of 

 Moufflon sheep the mere parting of a friend or companion 

 causes, in some individual, distress, and even alarm feelings 

 that spread by sympathy so as to become general throughout 

 the flock and panic results (Youatt). 



Of mixed or conjunct influences, physical and psychical, 

 that in various combinations powerfully affect the lower ani- 

 mals, none are so important as those involved in the good or 

 bad usage, kind or unkind treatment, of subject animals by 

 man. For it generally happens that the same man who 

 meets his dog or horse with a kind word and a gentle caress, 

 treats him well physically, abstains from blows or other forms 

 of unnecessary and undeserved chastisement, sees to its food, 

 lodging, and general comfort and health. The natural result 

 in the animal is general happiness, good temper, willingness 

 to be of service, readiness to repay kindness, and to display 

 gratitude, leading to pleasant relations with all men and 

 other animals, with whom it comes in contact. 



On the other hand, the same man that is irritable, cruel, 

 injudicious to his horse or dog in word is too likely to be 

 equally so in deed ; the angry oath is too certainly accom- 

 panied by the savage kick or whip-blow. Food, shelter, and 

 other requirements are probably unattended to, even when it 

 is man's own selfish interest to give them every attention. 

 And the natural result in this case is not only unhappiness 

 and ill-health in the animal- victims, but viciousness, apt to 

 become, by habitual ill-usage, incurable a viciousness that 

 includes all manner of infirmities of temper, with all prac- 

 ticable modes of revenge or retaliation, and consequently all 

 sorts of dangers to man's own life and property, as well as 

 to the lives of the ill-used animals themselves, and all other 

 animals with whom they may chance to be associated. 



Of influences that are usually regarded as more particu- 

 larly, or as exclusively, physical are 



1. Ordinary bodily pain, however caused. 



