324 The Naturalist in La Plata. 



pampas — I liave on two occasions witnessed it my- 

 self — for a riding-horse to come home, or to the 

 gate of his owner's house, to die. I am speaking of 

 riding- horses that are never doctored, nor treated 

 mercifully ; that look on their master as an enemy . 

 rather than a friend ; horses that live out in the 

 open, and have to be hunted to the corral or enclo- 

 sure, or roughly captured with a lasso as they run, 

 when their sei-vices are required. I retain a very vivid 

 recollection of the first occasion of witnessing an 

 action of this kind in a horse, although I was only a 

 boy at the time. On going out one summer evening 

 I saw one of the horses of the establishment stand- 

 ing unsaddled and unbridled leaning his head over 

 the gate. Going to the spot, I stroked his nose, and 

 then, turning to an old native who happened to be 

 near, asked him what could be the meaning of such 

 a thing. " I think he is going to die," he answered ; 

 " horses often come to the house to die." And next 

 morning the poor beast was found lying dead not 

 twenty yards from the gate ; although he had not 

 appeared ill when I stroked his nose on the previous 

 evening ; but when I saw him lying there dead, and 

 remembered the old native's words, it seemed to 

 me as marvellous and inexplicable that a horse 

 should act in that way, as if some wild creature — a 

 I'hea, a fawn, or dolichotes — had come to exhale his 

 last breath at the gates of his enemy and constant 

 persecutor, man. 



I now believe that the sensations of sickness and 

 approaching death in the riding-horse of the pam- 

 pas resemble or similate the pains, so often expe- 

 rienced, of hunger, thirst and fatigue combined. 



