CHAPTER III

ON ANIMAL LIFE

66

continued.

WE constantly speak of animals as free. A fish, says Ruskin, “is much freer than a Man; and as to a fly, it is a black incarnation of freedom." It is pleasant to think of anything as free, but in this case the idea is, I fear, to a great extent erroneous. Young animals may frolic and play, but older ones take life very seriously. About the habits of fish and flies, indeed, as yet we know very little. Any one, however, who will watch animals will soon satisfy himself how diligently they work. Even when they seem to be idling over flowers, or wandering aimlessly about, they are in truth diligently seeking for food, or collecting materials for nests. The industry of Bees is proverbial. When collecting honey or pollen

they often visit over twenty flowers in a minute, keeping constantly to one species, without yielding a moment's dalliance to any more sweet or lovely tempter. Ants fully deserve the commendation of Solomon. Wasps have not the same reputation for industry; but I have watched them from before four in the morning till dark at night working like animated machines without a moment's rest or intermission.

ence.

Sundays and

Bank Holidays are all the same to them. Again, Birds have their own gardens and farms from which they do not wander, and within which they will tolerate no interferTheir ideas of the rights of property are far stricter than those of some statesmen. As to freedom, they have their daily duties as much as a mechanic in a mill or a clerk in an office. They suffer under alarms, moreover, from which we are happily free. Mr. Galton believes that the life of wild animals is very anxious. "From my own recollection," he says, "I believe that every antelope in South Africa has to run for its life every one or two days upon an average, and that he starts or

gallops under the influence of a false alarm many times in a day. Those who have crouched at night by the side of pools in the desert, in order to have a shot at the beasts that frequent it, see strange scenes of animal life; how the creatures gambol at one moment and fight at another; how a herd suddenly halts in strained attention, and then breaks into a maddened rush as one of them becomes conscious of the stealthy movements or rank scent of a beast of prey. Now this hourly lifeand-death excitement is a keen delight to most wild creatures, but must be peculiarly distracting to the comfort-loving temperament of others. The latter are alone suited to endure the crass habits and dull routine of domesticated life. Suppose that an animal which has been captured and half-tamed, received ill-usage from his captors, either as punishment or through mere brutality, and that he rushed indignantly into the forest with his ribs aching from blows and stones. If a comfort-loving animal, he will probably be no gainer by the change, more serious alarms and no less ill-usage awaits him: he

hears the roar of the wild beasts, and the headlong gallop of the frightened herds, and he finds the buttings and the kicks of other animals harder to endure than the blows from which he fled he has peculiar disadvantages from being a stranger; the herds of his own species which he seeks for companionship constitute so many cliques, into which he can only find admission by more fighting with their strongest members than he has spirit to undergo. As a set-off against these miseries, the freedom of savage life has no charms for his temperament; so the end of it is, that with a heavy heart he turns back to the habitation he had quitted."

But though animals may not be free, I hope and believe that they are happy. Dr. Hudson, an admirable observer, assures us with confidence that the struggle for existence leaves them much leisure and famous. spirits. "In the animal world," he exclaims,1 "what happiness reigns! What ease, grace, beauty, leisure, and content! Watch these living specks as they glide through their 1 Address to Microscopical Society, 1890.

forests of algæ, all without hurry and care,' as if their 'span-long lives' really could endure for the thousand years that the old catch pines for. Here is no greedy jostling at the banquet that nature has spread for them; no dread of each other; but a leisurely inspection of the field, that shows neither the pressure of hunger nor the dread of an

enemy.

"To labour and to be content' (that 'sweet life' of the son of Sirach)—to be equally ready for an enemy or a friend to trust in themselves alone, to show a brave unconcern for the morrow, all these are the admirable points of a character almost universal among animals, and one that would lighten many a heart were it more common among men. That character is the direct result of the golden law If one will not work, neither let him eat'; a law whose stern kindness, unflinchingly applied, has produced whole nations of living creatures, without a pauper in their ranks, flushed with health, alert, resolute, self-reliant, and singularly happy."

It has often been said that Man is the only