Appendix. 389 



not far from the spot ; but when half way to it he would 

 look back, and, seeing the vultures advancing once more to 

 the corpse, would rush back to protect it. The soldiers 

 watched him for some time with great interest, and once 

 more they tried in vain to get him to follow them. Two 

 days afterwards they revisited the spot, to find the dog 

 lying dead by the side of his dead master. I had this story 

 from the lips of one of the witnesses. 



In all such cases, whether the dog watches over, conceals, 

 or buries a dead body, he is doubtless moved by the same 

 instinct which leads him to safeguard the animal he is 

 attached to — another dog or his human master. But, as 

 the dead animal is past help, it is, of course, a blunder of 

 the instinct ; and the blunder must be of very much less 

 frequent occurrence among wild than among domestic 

 animals. In a state of nature, when a gregarious animal 

 dies, he dies, as a rule, alone ; his body is not seen by his 

 former companions, and he is not missed. When he dies by 

 violence — which is the common fate — the body is carried off 

 or devoured by the killer. This being the usual order, there 

 is no instinct, except in a very few species, relating to the 

 disposal of the dead among mammals and other vertebrates, 

 such as is found in ants and other social insects. There are 

 a few mammalians that live together in small communities, 

 in a habitation made to last for many generations, in which 

 such an instinct would appear necessary, and it accordingly 

 exists, but is very imperfect. This is the case with the 

 vizcaeha, the large rodent of the pampas, which lives with 

 its fellows, to the number of twenty or thirty, in a cluster of 

 huge burrows. When a vizcaeha dies in a burrow, the body 

 is dragged out and thrown on to the mound among the mass 

 of rubbish collected on it — but not until he has been dead a 

 long time, and there is nothing left of him but the dry bones 

 held together by the skin. In that condition the other 

 members of the community probably cease to look on him as 

 one of their companions who has fallen into a long sleep ; he 

 is no more than so much rubbish, which must be cleared out 



