MEDICAL AND SURGICAL TREATMENT. 393 



Maternal affection among birds, deer, and other animals is 

 frequently bestowed mainly on the weakest of a brood or 

 family: mothers feed and tend their weaklings with con- 

 spicuous assiduity (Jesse). Just so does the human mother 

 tend her diseased, deformed, or idiotic child. 



In the camel herd of Warburton, in his journey across 

 Western Australia, when, on a critical occasion, the master 

 bull had poisoned itself, and was consequently ill and tempo- 

 rarily helpless, the young bulls became aware of the fact 

 almost before it was apparent to the camel-men with this 

 practical and serious result, that these young animals at once 

 showed signs of insubordination both to their own leader 

 the master bull in question and to their human masters ; in 

 other words, they took immediate advantage of circumstances. 



The sense of helplessness includes further the sense of 

 futility of effort, of the vainness, hopelessness of further at- 

 tempt at defence or escape ; and it begets, therefore, despair, 

 with all its results of whatever kind. These results are 

 of a very opposite kind, for despair begets in one animal a 

 condition of fury or frenzy, urging it to behaviour of an 

 immediately self-destructive character, and in another a 

 paralysis of thought and effort, or a morbid indifference, that 

 bring about its doom with equal certainty, and perhaps with 

 greater torture, though not so speedily. This sense of per- 

 sonal helplessness, of want of power or ability to compass 

 some desired end, is associated with the sense of difficulty 

 or danger and of need for other help than their own. 



On the other hand it is quite as common for animals not 

 to perceive the uselessness of their sacrifices or labours, a 

 subject treated of in the chapters on c Errors.' 



It is important to bear in mind that, just as certain 

 animals are keen and ready at observing, and sometimes at 

 taking advantage of physical impotence or disability in each 

 other, they also appreciate man's infirmities, both of mind and 

 body. In some cases they make kindly allowance for them. 

 Thus we are told that Sir Edwin Landseer's terrier ( Tiney,' 

 when it begged from Mr. Charles Landseer, who was deaf, 

 ' invariably barked in a much louder note than when ad- 

 dressing any other member of the family ' (Macaulay). And 



