318 The Naturalist in La Plata, 
tliat mysterious, passionless tragedy of nature — I 
refer to J. M, Swan, the painter of the Prodigal 
Son” and the ^^Lioness Defending her Cubs.” 
To his account of the animal’s dying place and 
instinct, Darwin adds: I do not at all understand 
the reason of this, but I may observe that the 
wounded huanacos at the Santa Cruz invariably 
walked towards the river.” 
It would, no doubt, be rash to affirm of any 
instinct that it is absolutely unique ; but, putting 
aside some doubtful reports about a custom of the 
Asiatic elephant, which may have originated in 
the account of Sindbad the Sailor’s discovery of 
an elephant’s burial place, we have no knowledge 
of an instinct similar to that of the huanaco in any 
other animal. So far as we know, it stands alone 
and apart, with nothing in the actions of other 
species leading up, or suggesting any family like- 
ness to it. But what chiefly attracts the mind to 
it is its strangeness. It looks, in fact, less like an 
instinct of one of the inferior creatures than the 
superstitious observance of human beings, who 
have knowledge of death, and believe in a continued 
existence after dissolution ; of a tribe that in past 
times had conceived the idea that the liberated 
spirit is only able to find its way to its future abode 
by starting at death from the ancient dying-place 
of the tribe or family, and thence moving westward, 
or skyward, or underground, over the well-worn 
immemorial track, invisible to material eyes. 
But, although alone among animal instincts in its 
strange and useless purpose- — for it is as absolutely 
useless to the species or race as to the dying individual 
