120 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
psychology: he was an example of the powerful 
effect of the conditions he had been reared in and 
of the persistence of habits acquired at an early 
period after they have ceased to be of any signifi- 
cance in the creature’s life. Every time I was in 
my gaucho friend’s company, when his favourite 
Cristiano, along with other saddle horses, was 
standing at the palenque, or row of posts set up 
before the door of a native rancho for visitors to 
fasten their horses to, my attention would be 
attracted to his singular behaviour. His master 
always tied him to the palenque with a long cabresto, 
or lariat, to give him plenty of space to move his 
head and whole body about quite freely. And that 
was just what he was always doing. A more 
restless horse I had never seen. His head was 
always raised as high as he could raise it—like an 
ostrich, the gauchos would say—his gaze fixed 
excitedly on some far object; then presently he 
would wheel round and stare in another direction, 
pointing his ears forward to listen intently to some 
faint far sound, which had touched his sense. The 
sounds that excited him most were as a rule the 
alarm cries of lapwings, and the objects he gazed 
fixedly at with a great show of apprehension 
would usually turn out to be a horseman on the 
horizon; but the sounds and sights would for some 
time be inaudible and invisible to us on account of 
their distance. Occasionally, when the bird’s alarm 
cries grew loud and the distant rider was found 
to be approaching, his excitement would increase 
