The Dying Hnanaco, 325 
together with the oppressive sensations caused by 
the ponderous native saddle, or recado, with its 
huge surcinglo of raw hide drawn up so tightly as 
to hinder free respiration. The suffering animal 
remembers how at the last relief invariably came, 
when the twelve or fifteen hours’ torture were over, 
the toil and the want, and when the great iron 
bridle and ponderous gear were removed, and he had 
freedom and food and drink and rest. At the gate 
or at the door of his master’s house, the sudden 
relief had always come to him ; and there does 
he sometimes go in his sickness, his fear over- 
mastered by his suffering, to find it again. 
Discussing this question with a friend, who has 
a subtle mind and great experience of the horse in 
semi-barbarous countries, and of many other ani- 
mals, wild and tame, in many regions of the globe, 
he put forward a different explanation of the action 
of the horse in coming home to die, which he thinks 
simpler and more probable than mine. It is, that 
a dying or ailing animal instinctively withdraws 
itself from its fellows — an action of self-preserva- 
tion in the individual in opposition to the well- 
known instincts of the healthy animals, which 
impels the whole herd to turn upon and persecute 
the sickly member, thus destroying its chances of 
recovery. The desire of the suffering animal is not 
only to leave its fellows, but to get to some solitary 
place where they cannot follow, or would never find 
him, to escape at once from a great and pressing 
danger. But on the pastoral pampas, where horses 
are so numerous that on that level, treeless area they 
are always and everywhere visible, no hidiug-place 
