The Strange Instincts of Cattle. 343 
adversary lie looked to see, and to slay him in his 
false-seeing anger* 
An illusion just as great, leading to action equally 
violent, hut ludicrous rather than painful to witness, 
may be seen in dogs, when encouraged by a man to 
the attack, and made by his cries and gestures to ex- 
pect that some animal they are accustomed to hunt 
is about to be unearthed or overtaken ; and if, 
when they are in this disposition, he cunningly 
exhibits and sets them on a dummy, made perhaps 
of old rags and leather and stuffed with straw, they 
will seize, worry, and tear it to pieces with the 
greatest fury, and without the faintest suspicion of 
its true character. 
That wild elephants will attack a distressed 
fellow seemed astonishing to Darwin, when he 
remembered the case of an elephant after escaping 
from a pit helping its fellow to escape also. But it 
is precisely the animals, high or low in the organic 
scale, that are social, and possess the instinct of 
helping each other, that will on occasions attack a 
fellow in misfortune — such an attack being no more 
than a blunder of the helping instinct. 
Felix de Azara records a rather cruel experiment 
on the temper of some tame rats confined in a cage. 
The person who kept them caught the tail of one 
of the animals and began sharply pinching it, 
keeping his hand concealed under the cage. Its 
cries of pain and struggles to free itself greatly 
excited the other rats ; and after rushing wildly 
round for some moments they flew at their dis- 
tressed companion, and fixing their teeth in its 
throat quickly dispatched it. In this case if tho 
