326 GENEKAL TREATMENT. 



is protected by humane public feeling or sentiment, it walks 

 the city streets fearlessly, stalking about the very market 

 places, as I have myself frequently seen in Dutch towns ; 

 while the more valuable eider duck in Iceland sits on its 

 eggs undisturbed by the presence of man. I have walked 

 among large colonies of the said ducks sitting on or in their 

 nests on the Island of Eidey, in the Bay of Eeykjavik, 

 stepping over and among them without causing them the 

 least concern. In such cases as the stork, which acts as a 

 scavenger, and the eider duck, which yields its valuable 

 down, a sense of the animal's value or use to man may 

 mingle with a feeling of superstitious veneration. But if it 

 do so, it must be very far from being so influential as mere 

 unreasoning superstition ; for the sense of the dog's or 

 horse's usefulness does not of itself, among the most highly 

 civilised nations, give rise to the same kind of humanitarian 

 and beneficent public feeling and practice. 



The sacred ibis in Egypt and the sacred monkey in India 

 are other familiar examples of animals protected by man's 

 superstitions. 



Dr. Leitner gives, as ' among the evidences of the high 

 state of civilisation of the inhabitants of that Central Asian 

 region to which he has given the name Dardistan, their love 

 and charity to animals.' * If such love and charity are really 

 or properly to be regarded as f among the evidences of a high 

 state of civilisation ' in man, we cannot say much for the 

 * state of civilisation ' of the leading nations of the Western 

 World of Western Europe at least ! 



It has been supposed and pointed out that man's treat- 

 ment of subject animals is determined in great measure by 

 the nature of "his food on the one hand, and of his religion on 

 the other. It is at all events a coincidence that the gentlest 

 treatment not only of domestic, but of certain wild and even 

 noxious animals, is, by or among the vegetarian Mohamme- 

 dan nations or peoples of the East. The ' mild ' Hindoo in 

 his behaviour towards the sacred monkey and other animals, 

 the Syrian shepherd in his dealings with his sheep and 



1 Nature, September 23, 1875, p. 466. 



