384 SELF-SUBMISSION BY ANIMALS TO 



ingredients or constituents of food. Thus the buffalo ' used 

 to lick greedily,' for the animal is now rapidly disappearing 

 before civilisation, the saline incrustation deposited on the 

 borders of salt lakes in various parts of North America (Grant). 

 Mongolian camels eat pure salt if they cannot get at a similar 

 saline efflorescence that covers the marshes and often exudes 

 from the soil on the grass steppes of Central Asia. On 

 them salt, in whatever form, acts ' as an aperient, especially 

 if they have been long without it' (Prejevalsky). 



Porteous says of hemlock conium maculatum that its 

 ( roots are eaten by cattle when unwell.' 



Certain animals are acquainted with the action of certain 

 natural poisons, and act upon their knowledge either by 

 using these poisons themselves, or by applying the appro- 

 priate natural antidotes when they find themselves unavoid- 

 ably poisoned. Thus some birds poison their captive young, 

 apparently regarding their death as preferable to imprison- 

 ment. 



On the other hand, the Indian mongoose, poisoned by 

 the snake which it attacks, uses appropriately as to time 

 and otherwise the antidote to be found in the mimosa 

 octandra. ' Its value both as a cure and as a preventive is 

 said to be well known ' to it. ' Whenever, in its battles with 

 serpents, it receives a wound, it at once retreats, goes in 

 search of the antidote, and having found and devoured it, 

 returns to the charge, and generally carries the day, seeming 

 none the worse for its bite ' (Miss Gordon- Gumming). Again, 

 a toad, bit or stung by a spider, repeatedly betook itself to a 

 plant of plantago major and ate a portion of its leaf, but 

 died after repeated bites of the spider, when the plant had 

 been experimentally removed by man (' Science Gossip'). 



Poison-bearing animals are, some of them at least, aware 

 of the effect of their own stings on their prey : for the scorpion, 

 for instance, sometimes deliberately uses its own sting upon 

 itself for suicidal purposes. 



It must be remembered, however, that plants or other 

 substances that are medicinal or poisonous to man or to cer- 

 tain animals, are not necessarily so to other animals. So 

 little may this be the case, that reversing the proverb that 



