4 84 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Dec, -SO, 1888. 



emotions, are precisely similar to man's. They caress 

 with then- lips and limbs, show resentment by facial dis- 

 tortion, bites and kicks, and fear by a tremor; they leap 

 with joy, loll with thirst, lag with fatigue, and attack 

 for revenge or reprisal. Even fishes, with their poor 

 deficient bodies, are able to manifest many mental opera- 

 tions in a manner intelligible to man, as well as to each 

 other. There is no end to authenticated instances of 

 animal sagacity, indicating premeditation, plan, purpose, 

 sense of duty, prudence, gratitude, method, judgment. 

 Animals memorize. They cherish malice, they dream m 

 their sleep, they can count, they have a sense of injustice, 

 a consciousness of error, and notions of forgiveness and 

 reparation. I have seen a brute of a man requite the 

 clumsy caress of his horse by a thumping blow on the 

 nose. His supreme intelligence did not comprehend the 

 animal's action, forsooth. Now some men get vexed if 

 they are not readily understood. Did the horse show 

 temper — this noble animal whom Job represents as 

 endued with the spirit of the tempest? Did ho even 

 resent the outrage? Not by retaliation, although he 

 plainly indicated Ids keen sense of the indignity. What 

 may we suppose his emotions to have been at treatment 

 so regardless and unprovoked ? Yet he presently forgave 

 all. Do not say that he forgot, for at all times afterward 

 he shrank with apprehension when his master approached. 

 Oh! the gentleness, forbearance and long-suffering of the 

 brutes, who oft-times grieve in silence— speechless and 

 unable to utter protest or complaint. 



Animals meditate. Dogs have been seen to sit in a 

 fit of abstraction, so that no one could engage their 

 attention, and presently start off with an impetus which 

 showed there was a mental impulse behind it. That was 

 a keen sense of finesse displayed by the Newfoundland dog 

 at a seaside resort, when he pushed little girls off the 

 pier so that he could jump in magnanimously to the res- 

 cue, and thereby obtain the reward of a handful of candy 

 which he anticipated the grateful parents would bestow. 

 He repeated the trick so often that he fell into suspicion 

 and disgrace, but his method showed not only a concep- 

 tion of the efficacy of a virtuous act and its logical recom- 

 pense, but the advantage of deception when, successfully 

 practiced. A crow which I knew of shammed hunger 

 habitually, so as to obtain more food, which he invariably 

 carried off and hid in a wall, and then came back for 

 more. In this way he accumulated large hoards of prov- 

 ender. A certain Java sparrow was able to distinguish 

 the click of its master's latch-key in the hall door from 

 any other person's, and flew to meet him with demon- 

 strations of joy as soon as he entered the house. He 

 never made a mistake. A sagacious mastiff always pulled 

 the door bell when he desired to enter. A parrot in New 

 Orleans seemed to answer questions categorically, and 

 recognized different persons, calling them by name. The 

 intelligence of insects is perhaps even more wonderful. 

 Fishes exhibit remarkable sagacity, which has been made 

 the theme of writers for two thousand years. 



Men are constantly imposed upon by their designing 

 fellow men, but animals seldom err in their judgment of 

 human character, or of their own. They can tell off 

 hand whether a man be tricky, vicious, kind or cruel, 

 brave or craven, vacillating or self-reliant. They will 

 shun or menace some men at sight. Other men will as 

 promptly engage their confidence. It is said that a man's 

 first impression is usually correct, but that he afterward, 

 allows his reason to run away with his judgment, and is 

 thus deceived. Wherein, then, does the wisdom of expe- 

 rience surpass the sublime quality of intuitive perception? 



Animals in herds are of the same mind. They move and 

 act always in concert; and inasmuch as their judgment 

 of natural phenomena is well nigh infallible, may they 

 not be mentally qualified to judge of situations where 

 they are not required to act ? The moment a man begins 

 to argue with himself, that isjjHma facie evidence that 

 he is astray. It is this feeling of doubt which makes us 

 seek counsel of others; it is the consciousness of our in- 

 nate fallibility which vexes us when the opinion we seek 

 is opposed to our own. Whenever a man gets lost he 

 either goes aimlessly ahead, or else he attempts to reason 

 himself into the right path, and so almost invariably 

 chooses the wrong one. Nothing but good luck will ever 

 extricate him Animals never get lost, because they 

 seldom find themselves in a false position, unless re- 

 strained of their own volition. A man will attempt to 

 drive a horse over an open bridge in the dark, or an un- 

 seen precipice, but the horse resists. What gives the 

 horse intuitive perception and not the man ? A horse has 

 been known to walk a stringpiece at night whose pres- 

 ence its rider did not even suspect, and which he could 

 not traverse in broad daylight. A man will perish of 

 thirst in a desert or lose his way, but his horse will take 

 him to water or to his home. A man cannot even tell 

 the points of the compass by the natural signs which are 

 above and all around him, nor does he perceive the signs 

 themselves. He will even look to the ears of his mule 

 for intimations of proximate danger. Man is constantly 

 apprehensive of calamities which perchance never come, 

 but the animals have a prescience which enables them to 

 avoid actual danger when it impends. It would seem as 

 if all the factitious helps of human science were unequal 

 to brute discernment. 



Domestic animals are more helpless than wild ones. 

 Whenever they place their confidence in man, or become 

 dependent upon him, thev become less able to take care 

 of themselves; but if they revert to the wild state they 

 presently recover their natural capabilities. They can 

 find better shelter, if not better food, than man usually 

 provides. We seldom hear of wild animals freezing to 

 death or being overtaken by floods, like domestic cattle 

 or sheep; yet we are apt to regard domestic animals as 

 the most intelligent of the two, simply because our ac- 

 quaintance with them is more intimate. We understand 

 them better through their visible traits, and fry the smat- 

 tering of their language which wc have acquired. 



The habit of observation in animals amounts to a 

 second sight. Is it mere instinct which directs the honey- 

 bee in his repeated flights to the same far distant spot, 

 and even to the same individual and identical flower 

 which blooms among the myriads around it? Having 

 discovered it accidentally in the first place, or been 

 guided to it by the subtle sense which he possesses, he 

 never errs after ward. No doubt he exercises the f acu lties 

 ot observation and memory, and his perception is so 

 acute, and his memory so retentive, that they never fail 

 him. Surely the landmarks and guides for the observa- 

 tion ot men are as numerous, conspicuous and infallible 

 as they are for the bee. If men would only exercise 



their faculties of observation more they would be smarter, 

 Such are masters of legerdemain. The significance of all 

 these testimonies will be admitted by all who do not re- 

 gard them from a plane so lofty that they cannot discern 

 their intellectual depth. But animals do' not reveal their 

 best intelligence to men except under most favoring cir- 

 cumstances. Animals are imbued with a constitutional 

 timidity and mistrust of man, implanted for their own 

 protection, and their fear is well founded, for man's 

 habitual attitude toward them is aggressive, his constant 

 purpose being to kill, capture, enslave, or even to torture 

 for his own profit or amusement. With some this fear 

 amounts to absolute fright, their entire thoughts being 

 engrossed with the sole idea of flight or keeping out of 

 feach, so that there is no room for other mental oper- 

 ations. No wonder that their attributes don't shine out. 

 Scare a man out of his wits and he tosses out the mirror 

 and tenderly totes the mattress; but deer, foxes and 

 hares, with the hounds at their heels, preserve their 

 presence of mind sufficiently to contrive matchless ex- 

 pedients to baffle their pursuers. They formulate new 

 devices on the jump and apply them on the emergency. 

 Is not this a high order of genius? Something rnore than 

 instinct? The man who contrives something after months 

 of study is called an inventor, and he gets a patent on his 

 process, but there axe no patents on the expedients of a 

 fox which are "fresh every horn*." 



The intelligence of animals is modified by their contact 

 with man. The moment their overpowering sense of 

 fear is banished they begin to manifest it in a hundred 

 charming ways. It is in this mood of confidence that 

 they become susceptible to what is called "training/' but 

 which is, in truth, a mutual interchange of intelligences 

 through juxtaposition; for is not man a self-confessed 

 student of nature, obtaining a moiety of his knowledge 

 by observations of animals' habits. If sometimes a 

 student, have they always a preceptor? 



Development comes by genius through necessity. 

 Brute wants are measured by the means to provide, but 

 human wants increase with the means of providing; and 

 this cumulative urgency of mankind is constantly stimu- 

 lating the invention of labor-saving machines and devel- 

 oping the intellect. Time is no object to brutes. They 

 have no incentive to devise what they do not need and 

 could not use or handle if they did. Their personal 

 endowment is all sufficient for their simple requirements 

 in their normal state of contentment. Until a man has 

 learned the application of mechanical contrivances they 

 are of no more service to him than they are to the brute. 

 Both would alike die of thirst beside a cistern fastened with 

 a combination lock. But animals often get to know the 

 uses of implements, and that right soon. A horse will 

 unlock a gate, let down the bars and work a pump handle 

 to get a drink. The ox in the .shambles comprehends the 

 deadly use of the axe and knife and bellows in terror of 

 the blow which he cannot avert, because he is so deplor- 

 ably handicapped by nature. 



The chief difference between the intellectual promptings 

 of men and brutes is that brutes as an order contemplate 

 only the present, while man is concerned for the future, 

 chiefly on account of the taint of sin, which inheres in 

 him, and the penalty which he must foref end or incur; 

 and the incomprehensible enigma is that the brutes should 

 be helplessly involved in the pains and tribulations of a 

 transgression in which they took no part. 



The term "instinct'' is a very convenient designation 

 for men to use when they fail to explain the inscrutable 

 operations of the animal intelligence. Like the proto- 

 plasm in the cell, which is essentially the same in all 

 organic matter, so is the inherent energy of the spiritual 

 intelligence wherever it exists. The intellectual germs 

 or elements are essentially the same in angels, men and 

 animals, but in different stages of development; and who 

 can guess how nearly they approximate? It is impossible 

 to analyze them or define them separately, for they all 

 blend just where they seem most to divide! When this 

 mundane envelope is sloughed off, the intellectual facul- 

 ties will appear without handicap or hamper, and all will 

 start fair on the new epoch of existence. Happy will 

 those creatures be whose advanced career in the future 

 life has not been prejudiced by the taint acquired in the 

 primary school of earth. 



The "end for which mankind is created and toward 

 which he is being carried by the drift of time, is con- 

 tained, according to the Scripture, in "love, joy, peace, 

 long-suffering, contentment, gentleness, goodness, tem- 

 perance and self-control." All these the animals have 

 inherent; and who dare say that, living in community 

 witli men, and dying as men die, they have not with 

 men a common lot and destiny, whatever it be? 



Animals were created before men; and when men 

 came into the world, as naked and hirsute as the brutes 

 themselves, with no higher aims than theirs, and no am- 

 bition beyond immediate subsistence and enjoyment, 

 they regarded then- predecessors with the deference 

 natural to all latest comers. They looked to them for 

 example and from them learned how to provide for their 

 own daily wants. It was not until man came into pos- 

 session of the knowledge and faculties which he was for- 

 bidden to acquire, that he began to have inordinate de- 

 sires; tjjgtt he became conscious of unsatisfied require- 

 ments,' and when he commenced to assert his delegated 

 right of dominion over the beasts, and to measure the 

 power which had been given him to cope with and sub- 

 due them, he had to meet them with their own crude 

 weapons, tooth, finger and claw — for the sons of Adam 

 had no guns — and the respect which he then conceived 

 for their might and prowess is shown in every way in 

 primitive fable, song, statue, story and hieroglyph. And 

 long subsequently, in the course of human advancement, 

 men regarded the animals as gifted with a superior in- 

 telligence. They adopted their generic names for their 

 own families and clans; they wore their effigies and 

 skins in amulets, charms and totems: they worshipped 

 them in symbol and in fact, even to the calling forth of 

 the divine protest at Mt. Sinai. They venerated and 

 held sacred the living, and they apotheosized the dead. 

 They illustrated their homage in allegory and tradition, 

 in the Zodiac, and in the brightest constellations of the 

 firmament. 



Ever since the commencement of the Christian era, 

 the Holy Spirit, intellect ineffable, has been typified by 

 a dove, and even so appeared in supernatural manifesta- 

 tion at the Transfiguration. The second person of the 

 Trinity is symbolized by the figure of a lamb, and, as if 

 to forecast the final preferment of animals under the 

 divine economy, we have in the Apocalypse beasts ap- 



pearing in various forms in the final accounting in 

 closest intimacy with the Author of the Universe. The 

 animals were with man in the beginning; they have kept 

 progressive pace and place with human development;, and 

 so will continue unto the end. Then, not only typically, 

 but in fact, "the lion will lie down with the lamb, and a 

 little child shall lead them," Charles Haelock.. 



BUFFALO DOMESTICATION. 



THE domestication and successful rearing of the. 

 buffalo has at length become an accomplished 

 fact. A dozen years ago we had something to say on 

 this subject, which was published in Forest and Stream 

 of March 15, 18T7. After speaking of the rapid destruction 

 of the buffalo which was then taking place, and calling- 

 attention to the fact that the Yellowstone National Park 

 was the only region of our country where the buffalo 

 could be pi-eserved in a state of nature, we said: 



"But this is not the only means by which the buffalo 

 may be preserved. An animal which in all essential 

 respects agrees so closely with the domestic cattle must 

 surely prove of vast importance to the farmer and stock 

 raiser, if its domestication were but systematically 

 attempted. We have at various times seen in Montana, 

 Nebraska and Kansas young buffaloes running at large 

 with the herds of domestic cattle, and in then" actions 

 resembling in all respects their tame companions. With 

 the cattle they would wander off for days or weeks to 

 distant parts of the range, returning from time to time, 

 and being quite as gentle and docile as the other in- 

 dividuals of the herd. When these calves approach 

 maturity, what more natural than that the bulls should 

 be broken to the yoke ? The owner is not slow to avail 

 himself of their enormous strength, and teams of young 

 bulls are by no means uncommon in the vicinity of the 

 buffalo range. A Montana settler told us a year or two 

 since that a yoke of these animals which he had until 

 recently possessed could pull more than "any two of 

 cattle on the place.' Then- power and endurance are un- 

 doubted, though their temper is not, perhaps, of the best. 

 In fact, it is said if they desire to go in any particular 

 direction, or not to go at all, nothing that the driver can 

 say or do will have the slightest effect in changing their 

 determination. Such little eccentricities as these, how- 

 ever, would no doubt be overcome after a generation or 

 two of domestication, or might be more immediately 

 modified by a cross of domestic blood. 



"The experiment of cross breeding the buffalo with our 

 domestic stock is said to have been successful in the 

 highest degree wherever it has been attempted. The 

 progeny seem to be very hardy; the milk of the cows is 

 exceedingly rich, and the supply bountiful, and the flesh 

 is in no respect inferior to the best beef. Gallatin states 

 that ninety years ago both pure and half bred buffalo 

 were common in Virginia, the calves being frequently 

 captured with dogs and brought into the towns to be 

 reared. Mr. Robt. Wickliffe, writing to Mi-. Audubon in 

 1843, mentioned that for thirty years he h vd bred the 

 pure and mixed stock with success. Ultimately, how- 

 ever, through lack of care, the race of the bison has in 

 all cases been merged into that of the domestic stock. In 

 the West the experiment is now being tried once more, 

 and we earnestly hope it may succeed. 



"It is an accepted fact that the buffalo on the plains is 

 to become a thing of the past, but there remain these 

 boundless prairies, their former feeding grounds, still 

 covered with the richest of pasture. Already these are 

 becoming immense stock farms, over which range hun- 

 dreds of thousands of the broad-horned steers of Texas. 

 The old buffalo ranges are filling up with cattle, and by 

 the importation of blooded bulls the quality of the stock 

 is being continually improved. From these plains a large 

 portion of the beef for Eastern and European consump- 

 tion will ultimately be derived. Before the buffalo 

 wholly disappear some intelligent effort should be made 

 for inter-breeding on a large scale, so that ere the last of 

 the shaggy wild brutes has yielded up his life there 

 shall have been infused into our Western cattle the hardy 

 blood of their obliterated relatives, 



"Thus the plains and bluffs will not be tenantless. Long 

 after the dark, serried and resistless masses have disap- 

 peared, and the thunder of a million hoofs has died 

 away, there will remain a new race blending the best 

 qualities of our present stock with those of the buffalo. 

 So may these sturdy lialf -breeds wander over and draw 

 fat subsistence from the same hills which were once 

 blackened by the dusky hordes of their untamed an- 

 cestors." 



The prophecy then made seems in a fair way to be ful- 

 filled. There are now in this country nearlv 250 

 buffalo in a state of domestication, and while a part of 

 them are kept in cages or so restrained of their liberty 

 that it is impossible for them to do well, yet not far from 

 a hundred and seventy head are in a perfectly natural 

 state and are increasing at a very satisfactory rate, as 

 well as interbreeding successfully with the domestic 

 cattle. 



Besides these domesticated and captive animals, there 

 are the wild herds, of which one, that in the Yellowstone 

 National Park, is protected by the United States Govern- 

 ment, and the other, that on the Arctic slope, by its 

 extreme northern habitat. The Yellowstone herd "may 

 number 300 head, and consists entirely of the so called 

 "mountain bison;" while the Peace River herd is the 

 form known as the "wood buffalo," and is now very rare, 

 though a few still exist there. The most recent advices 

 speak of this herd as divided into two bands, one of 

 which, numbering about 200, ranges on the east side of 

 Peace River, between that stream and the Athabaska; 

 while the other and larger band is on Salt River, further 

 north, and is supposed to number about 600 head. Two 

 small bands, one of twelve and one of eight head, were 

 seen this summer in northern Montana in the neighbor- 

 hood of the head of the Musselshell River, but besides 

 these there are probably not fifty wild buffalo on the 

 continent. 



Mr. C. J. Jones is now the largest breeder of buffalo in 

 the world, for by his purchase of the Bedson herd he 

 has acquired possession of most of the buffalo under 

 domestication. His herd numbers 1.27 full-blooded 

 animals, and twenty-three cross-breeds. His pure bloods 

 are about equally divided as to sex. This will enable him 

 to go into the business of raising half-breed stock to an 

 extent that is almost without limit, and at the same time 

 will enable him to keep his herd pure. Of the other 

 bunches of domesticated buffalo much less is known, 



