THE TEMPER OF ANIMALS. 
The old theory that animal good-temper might be 
accounted for on the ground that animals are sensible 
of pleasure and pain, but not of advantage and dis- 
advantage, was only a half-truth, for animals are 
subject to jealousy, and jealousy is the direct result 
of a feeling of personal disadvantage. But it draws 
attention to the fact that occasions for disagreement 
in the case of most animals are rare and unusual. 
Questions of domicile are almost the sole ground of 
discord in the animal world, with the exception of the 
fierce dissensions raised at pairing-time, and even in 
the last case combat is only general in the case of 
polygamous animals. Deer fight more fiercely than 
wolves, and wild sheep than lions ; and though there 
is, or was, an eagle in the Zoo which was caught 
locked in the talons of another eagle when fighting in 
the spring, the fiercest birds are usually friendly with 
their own species, and while ruffs and black-game 
fight like gladiators for their wives, the eagles and the 
peregrines as a rule mate in peace. Proximity, the 
severest trial to human temper, seldom ruffles the 
animal mind, and different species live in harmony 
together, each seeming, as in the case of the owls and 
