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ANIMALS PRESENTIMENT OF DANGER Some interesting letters have been appearing in the Daily Mail upon the subject of the perplexing attitude of animals toward imminent death whieli sometimes thev will fear while at others they will be perfectly indifferent to it Mr Walter Winans for example gives several instances I have known a dog beg nut to hi taken on a railway journey when usually he used to dance about with delight when he saw these preparations being made On the occasion oil which lie exhibited distress he slipped off the platform was run over and killed I have known a horse which was a free jumper re ¬ fuse obstinately a small fence and when his rider forced him over it the horse broke his back A bullfinch not a pet but merely one of a cagefnl of birds dropped down screaming I took him out and so long as he lay in my hand he was quite quiet but he screamed if I attempted to put liim back on some cotton wool He liy in my hand for u quarter of an hour and died quite quietly On the other hand I have seen through the telescope wounded deer too hard hit to be able to move away begin to graze quietly Of course this was in cases where it was not possible immediately to kill them I have had a horse refuse to pass under a tree under which he had passed every day for years It was a perfectly calm day 1 drove him around the free and as I did so a big branch fell upon exactly the spot on which he would have been if I had not let the horse go round In connection with the instance of the j wounded deer it may be remembered that in the Derby of ISll llolocausto ridden by Sloan broke his leg Sloan wrote that Iljo animal was a hor1 I rlldc sight with his4ileg broken off short in fact the stump was sticking in the ground When his rider dismounted the horse betjan munching the grass Horse and Hound 1
