THE BRUISED SERPENT 177 



has no instinctive fear of the Hon ; if he has never 

 been mauled or attacked by them, nor associated 

 with horses that have learnt from experience or 

 tradition to dread them, he exhibits no more fear 

 of lions than of zebras and camelopards. The fact 

 is the horse fears in different regions the lion, wolf, 

 puma, red-skin, and rattlesnake, just as the burnt 

 child dreads the fire. 



But here is an incident, say the believers in 

 Darwin's notion, which proves that the fear of 

 certain animals is instinctive in the horse. A 

 certain big -game hunter brought home a lion's 

 hide, rolled up before it was properly dried and 

 wrapped up in canvas. It was opened in the 

 stable where there were several horses, and the 

 covering was no sooner removed and the hide 

 peeled open than the horses were thrown into a 

 panic. The true explanation is that horses are 

 terrified at any strange animal smell, and a powerful 

 smell from the hide of any animal unknown to 

 them would have had the same effect. That fear 

 of a strange animal smell is probably an instinct, 

 but it may not be. In a state of nature the horse 

 learns from experience that certain smells indicate 

 danger, and in Patagonia and on the pampas, 

 when he flies in terror from the scent of a puma 

 which is imperceptible to a man, he pays not the 

 slightest attention to the two most powerful 

 mammalian stenches in the world — that of the 

 skunk, and that of the pampas male deer, Cervus 

 campestris. Experience has taught him — or it has 



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